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1 



CHARLES KINGSLEY 



HIS LETTERS 



MEMORIES OF HIS LIFE. 



EDITED BY HIS WIFE. 





ABRIDGED FROM THE LONDON EDITION. 



" Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, 
Eiise after warre, death after life, does greatly please." 

Spenser's " Faerie Queen," Book I., Canto ix. 






N0..0. : 



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NEW YORK : 
SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & COMPANY. 

1877. 



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Copyright by 

SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., 

1877- 



John t. Trow & Son, 

Printers and Bookbinders, 

205-213 East tith St., 

NEW YORK. 



§n\xmM 



TO THE BELOVED MEMORY 

OF 

A RIGHTEOUS MAN 

WHO LOVED GOD AND TRUTH ABOVE ALL THINGS. 
A MAN OF UNTARNISHED HONOUR- 
LOYAL AND CHIVALROUS — GENTLE AND STRONG — 

MODEST AND HUMBLE — TENDER AND TRUE 

PITIFUL TO THE WEAK — YEARNING AFTER THE ERRING — 

STERN TO ALL FOKMS OF WRONG AND OPPRESSION, 

YET MOST STERN TOWARDS HIMSELF — 

WHO BEING ANGRY, YET SINNED NOT. 

WHOSE HIGHEST VIRTUES WERE KNOWN ONLY 

TO HIS WIFE, HIS CHILDREN, HIS SERVANTS, AND THE POOR. 

WHO LIVED IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD HERE, 

AND PASSING THROUGH THE GRAVE AND GATE OF DEATH 

NOW LIVETH UNTO GOD FOR EVERMORE. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO THE 
ABRIDGMENT. 



As published in London, these Memoirs of Charles 
KiNGSLEY extended to two octavo volumes of five hundred 
pages each. These volumes are here abridged in the hope 
that to the American reader the interest of the Memoirs 
may be increased. In the English edition, long and fre- 
quent extracts were made from Mr. Kingsley's published 
works. These have been dropped from this volume, while 
the references to them have been retained. The Mem- 
ories of Mr. Ktngsley supphed by intimate friends, at 
the request of his widow, have been reduced where the 
different writers dwelt upon the same characteristics ; 
others which lacked point and partook more of the nature 
of personal panegyric, have been omitted altogether. Last 
of all, the abridgment has necessarily fallen upon Mr. 
Kingsley's letters, but pains have been taken to preserve 
his own record of the conclusions at which he arrived upon 
the many important problems that occupied his incessantly 
active mind, although it has been impossible, as indeed it 
has seemed unnecessary, to reproduce his record of all the 
phases through which he passed in arriving at these conclu- 
sions. The narrative in which Mrs. KiNGSLEY has supplied 



viii Intro due to 7y Note to the Abridg7nent. 

the biographical details necessary to connect these letters 
has been left intact, and an advantage may justly be 
claimed for the abridgment in the fact that the modesty, 
the excellent taste, and the intense affection and sincere 
reverence for her lamented husband which mark this part 
of these Memoirs are here brought into greater promi- 
nence than it was possible for them to have in the original 
work. 

Editor of the Abridgment. 



PREFACE TO THE LONDON EDITION. 



In bringing out these Volumes, thanks are due and 
gratefully offered to all who have generously given their 
help to the work; — to the many known and unknown 
Correspondents who have treasured and lent the letters 
now first made public; — to the Publishers, who have 
allowed quotations to be made from Mr. Kingsley's 
pubhshed works ; — to the Artists, especially Sheldon 
WilHams, Esq., and Francis Goode, Esq., of Hartley 
Wintney, &c., whose sketches and photographs have been 
kindly given for the Illustrations of the book ; but above 
all to the friends who have so eloquently borne witness 
to his character and genius. These written testimonies to 
their father's worth are a rich inheritance to his children, 
and God only knows the countless unwritten ones, of 
souls rescued from doubt, darkness, error, and sin, of work 
done, the worth of which can never be calculated upon 
earth, of seed sown which has borne, and will still bear 
fruit for years, perhaps for generations to come, when 
the name of Charles Kingsley is forgotten, while his 
unconscious influence will endure treasured up in the 
eternal world, where nothing really good or great can be 



X Preface. 

lost or pass away, to be revealed at that Day when 
God's Book shall be opened and the thoughts of all 
hearts be made known. 

For the feeble thread, imperfect and unworthy of its 
great subject, with which these precious records are tied 
together, the Editor can only ask a merciful judgment 
from the public. 



F. E. K. 

Byfleet, October, 1876. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Birth and Parentage— Inherited Talents — Removal from Devonshire to Bur- 
ton-on-Trent —Clifton — Barnack and its Traditions — First Sermon and 
Poems — Childish Character — Effect of Fen Scenery on his Mind 21 



CHAPTER n. 

1830—1838. 
Aged 11-19. 

Life at Clovelly — School Life at Clifton — Bristol Riots — Their Effect on his 
Mind — Helston — Early Friendships — Letters from Rev. Derwent Cole- 
ridge and Rev. R. C. Powles — Move to Chelsea — Enters King's College, 
London 30 



CHAPTER III. 
1838— 1842. 
Aged 19-23. 

Life at Cambridge — Visit to Oxfordshire — Undergraduate Days — Decides to 
take Orders — Takes his Degree — Correspondence — Letters from Cam- 
bridge Friends 41 



CHAPTER IV, 
1842 — 1843, 
Aged 23-24. 

Reads for Holy Orders — Correspondence — Ordained Deacon — Settles at 
Eversley — Parish Work — Letters 54 



1 2 Contents. 

CHAPTER V. 

1842 — 1843. 
Aged 23-24. 

PAGE 

Curate Life — Letter from Colonel W. — Brighter Prospects — Correspondence 

Renewed — Promise of Preferment — Leaves Eversley 67 

CHAPTER VI. 
1844 — 1847. 
Aged 25-28. 

Marriage — Curacy of Pimperne — Rectory of Eversley — Correspondence .... 74 

CHAPTER VII. 

1848. 
Aged 29. 

Publication of " Saint's Tragedy" — Chartist Riots — Tenth of April — Politics 
for the People — Professorship at Queen's College — " Yeast " — Illness 93 

CHAPTER VIII. 
1849. 

Aged 30. 

Winter in Devonshire — Ilfracombe — Decides on taking Pupils — Correspon- 
dence — Visit to London — Social Questions — Fever at Eversley — Renewed 
Illness — Returns -to Devonshire — Cholera in England — Sanitary Work — 
Bermondsey— Letter from Mr. C. K. Paul ill 

CHAPTER IX. 

1850— 1851. 
Aged 31-32. 

Resigns the Office of Clerk in Orders at Chelsea — Pupil Life at Eversley— 
Publication of "Alton Locke" — Letters from Mr. Carlyle — ^Writes for 
"Christian Socialist" — Troubled State of the Country — Burglaries — 
The Rectory Attacked 127 



Contents. 13 

CHAPTER X. 

1851. 
Aged 32. 

PAGE 

Opening of the Great Exhibition — Attack on " Yeast " in the " Guardian " and 
Reply — Occurrence in a London Church — Goes to Germany — Letter from 
Mr. John Martineau 135 



CHAPTER Xr. 

1852. 
Aged zZ- 

Strike in the Iron-Trade — Correspondence on Social and Metaphysical Ques- 
tions — Mr. Erskine comes to Fir Grove — Parson Lot's last Words — Birth 
of his youngest Daughter — Letter from Frederika Bremer 160 



CHAPTER XII. 

1853- 
Aged 34. 

The Rector in his Church — " Hypatia" Letters from Chevalier Bunsen— Mr. 

Maurice's Theological Essays — Correspondence with Thomas Cooper... 174 



CHAPTER XIII. 

1854. 

Aged 35, 

Torquay — Seaside Studies— Lectures in Edinburgh — Deutsche Theologie-— 
Letter from Baron Bunsen — Crimean War — Settles in North Devon — 
Writes " Wonders of the Shore " and " Westward Ho." 201 



14 Contents. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

1855- 
Aged 2)^. 

PAGE 

Bideford — Crimean War — Death of his friend Charles Blachford Mansfield — 
"Westward Ho" — Letters from Mr. Henry Drummond and Rajah 
Brooke — Drawing Class for Mechanics at Bideford — Leaves Devonshire 
— Lectures to Ladies in London — Correspondence — Winter at Farley 
Court — The " Heroes " Written 215 



CHAPTER XV. 

1856. 

Aged 37. 

Winter at Farley Court — Letter from a Sailor at Hong Kong— Union Strikes 
— Fishing Poem and Fishing Flies — The Sabbath Question — Invitation 
to Snowdonia — Visit to North Wales — American Visitors — Preface to 
Tauler's Sermons 233 



^ CHAPTER XVT 

The Father in his Home — x'^.n Atmosphere of Joy — The Out-door Nursery — 
Life on the Mount — Fear and Falsehood — The Training of Love — Favor- 
ites and Friends in the House, in the Stable, and on the Lawn 257 



CHAPTER XVII. 

1857. 
Aged 38. 

' Two Yeafs Ago "—The Crowded Church— Unquiet Sundays— Letters to 
Mr. Bullar— Dr. Rigg— Mr. Tom Hughes' Piecists and Su^uos- Letter from 
a Naval Chaplain— Indian Mutiny— The Romance of Real Life 265 



Contents. 15 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

1858. 

Aged 39. 

PAGE 

Eversley Work — Diphtheria — Lectures and Sermons at Aldershot — Blessing 
the Colors of the 22nd Regiment— Staff College— Advanced Thinkers — 
Poems and Santa Maura — Letter from Dr. Monsell — Letters to Dr. Mon- 
sell, Dean Stanley, &c. — Letter from Captain Congreve — Birth of his Son 
Grenville — Second Visit to Yorkshire 278 



CHAPTER XIX. 
1859. 

Aged 40. 

Sanitary Work — First Sermon at Buckingham Palace — Queen's Chaplaincy 
— First Visit to Windsor — Letter to an Atheist — Correspondence with 
Artists — Charles Bennett — Ladies' Sanitary Association — Letter from 
John Stuart Mill 286 



CHAPTER XX, 

1S60, 
Aged 41. 

Professorship of Modern History — Death of his Father and of Mrs. Anthony 
Froude — Planting the Churchyard — -Visit to Ireland — First Salmon killed 
— Wet Summer — Sermon on Weather — Letter from Sir Charles Lyell — 
Correspondence — Residence in Cambridge — Inaugural Lecture in the 
Senate House — Visits to Barton Hall — Letter from Sir Charles Bunbury. 303 



CHAPTER XXL 

1861— 1S62. 

Aged 42-43. 

Cambridge — Lectures to the Prince of Wales — Essays and Reviews — Letters 
to Dr. Stanley — Bishop of Winchester-^Tracts for Priests and People — 
Death of the Prince Consort — Letter to Sir C. Bunbury — The Water- 
babies — Installation Ode at Cambridge — Visit to Scotland — British Asso- 
ciation — Lord Dundreary 314 



1 6 Contents. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

1863. 
Aged 44. 

PAGE 

Fellow of the Geological Society — Work at Cambridge — Prince of Wales's 
Wedding — Wellington College Chapel and Museum — Letter from Dr. 
Benson — Lecture at Wellington — Letters to Sir Charles Lyell, Prof. 
Huxley, Charles Darwin, James A. Froude, &c. — Whitchurch Still-life 
— Toads in Holes — D.C.L. Degree at Oxford— Bishop Colenso — Sermons 
on the Pentateuch — The Water-babies — Failing Health 326 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

1864 — 1865. 
Aged 45-46. 

Illness — Controversy with Dr. Newman — Apologia— Journey to the South of 
France — Biarritz — Pau — An Earthquake — Narbonne — Sermons in London 
and at Windsor — Enclosure of Eversley Common — University Sermons 
at Cambridge — Mr. John Stuart Mill's London Committee — Letter on ■ 
the Trinity— Letter on Subscription — Luther and Demonology — Visit of 
Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands to Eversley Rectory and Welling- 
ton College — The Mammoth on Ivory — Death of King Leopold — Lines 
written at Windsor Castle 346 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

1866— 1867. 
Aged 47-48. 

Cambridge— Death of Dr. Whewell— The American Professorship — Monoto- 
nous Life of the Country Laboring Class — Penny Readings — Strange 
Correspondents — Life of Bewick— Letters to Max Miiller— The Jews in 
Cornwall — The Meteor Shower — Letter to Professor Adams — The House 
of Lords — A Father's Education of his Son — " Eraser's Magazine" — Bird 
Life, Wood Wrens — Names and Places — Darwinism— Beauty of Color, 
its Influence and Attractions— Flat-Fish — Ice Problems — St. Andrews 
and British Association — Abergeldie Castle — Rules for Stammerers 363 



Co7ttents. 1 7 

CHAPTER XXV. 

1868. 

Aged 49. 

PAGE 

Attacks of the Press — Lectures on Sixteenth Century — Mr. Longfellow — Sir 
Henry Taylor on Crime and its Punishment — Letter from Mr. Dunn — 
Letter from Rev. William Harrison 386 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

1869 — 1870. 
Aged 50-51. 

Resignation of Professorship — Women's Suffrage Question — Letters to Mr. 
Maurice, John Stuart Mill — Canonry of Chester — Social Science Meeting 
at Bristol — Letter from Dr. E. Blackwell — Medical Education for Women 
— West Indian Voyage — Letters from Trinidad — Return Home — Eversley 
a Changed Place — Flying Columns — Heath Fires — First Residence at 
Chester — Botanical Class — Field Lectures — Women's Suffrage — Franco- 
Prussian War — Wallace on Natural Selection — Matthew Arnold and 
Hellenism 398 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

1871. 
Aged 52. 

Lecture on " The Theology of the Future " at Sion College — Expeditions of 
the Chester Natural Scie.nce Society — Lectures on Town Geology — Race 
Week at Chester — Letters on Betting — Camp at Bramshill — The Prince 
of Wales in Eversley — Prince of Wales's Illness — Lecture to Royal Artil 
lery Officers at Woolwich 421 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

1872. 

Aged 53. 

Opening of Chester Cathedral Nave — Deaths of Mr. Maurice and Norman 
McLeod— Letters to Max Muller — Mrs. Luard — Lecture at Birmingham 
and its Results— Lecture on Heroism at Chester — A Poem — The Athana- 

sian Creed 434 

2 



1 8 Contents. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

1873— 1874. 
Aged 54-55- 

PACE 

Harrow-on-the-Hill — Canonry of Westminster — His Son's Return — His 
Mother's Death — Parting from Chester — Congratulations — Sermon and 
Letters on Temperance — Preaching in Westminster Abbey — Voyage to 
America — Eastern Cities and Western Plains — Canada— Niagara — The 
Prairie — Salt Lake City — Yo Semite Valley and Big Trees — San Fran- 
cisco — Illness — Rocky iVEountains and Colorado Springs — Last Poem — 
Return Home — Letter from John G. Whittier 441 



CHAPTER XXX. 

1874-5. 
Aged 55. ^ 

RetiTrn from America — Work at Eversley — Illness at Westminster— New 
Anxiety— Last Sermons in the Abbey — Leaves the Cloisters for ever — 
■ Last Return to Eversley — The Valley of the Shadow of Death — Last 
Illness and Departure — The Victory of Life over Death and Time 474 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Portrait of Charles Kingsley Frontispiece. 

Fac-similb of the Original Manuscript of the Three Fishers... 156 

EvERSLEY Church i7i> 

The Great Fir-Trees on the Rectory Lawn at Eversley 256 

The Rectory at Eversley 263 

The Study Window, Eversley Rectory 39^ 

Charles Kingsley's Grave, Eversley Churchyard 488 



CHARLES KINGSLEY: 

HIS LETTERS AND MEMORIES OF HIS LIFE. 



CHAPTER I. 



Birth and Parentage— Inherited Talents — Removal from Devonshire to Burton- 
on-Trent — Clifton — Barnack and its Traditions — First Sermon and Poems — 
Childish Character — Effect of Fen Scenery on his Mind. 

Charles Ktngsley, son of Charles Kingsley, of Battramsley in 
the New Forest, was born on the 12th of June, 1819, at Hohie 
Vicarage, under the brow of Dartmoor, Devonshire. His family- 
claimed descent from the Kingsleys of Kingsley or Vale Royal, in 
Delamere Forest, and from Rannulph de Kingsley, whose name in 
an old family pedigree stands as " Grantee of the Forest of Mara 
and Mondrem from Randall Meschines, ante 1128." Charles's 
father was a man of cultivation and refinement, a good linguist, an 
artist, a keen sportsman and natural historian. He was educated 
at Harrow and Oxford, and brought up with good expectations as 
a country gentleman, but having been early in life left an orphan, 
and his fortune squandered for him during his minority, he soon 
spent what was left, and at the age of thirty found himself almost 
penniless, and obliged; for the first time, to think of a profession. 
Being too old for the army, and having many friends who were 
owners of Church property, he decided on the Church, sold his 
hunters and land, and with a young wife, went for a second time 
to college, entering his name at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read 
for Holy Orders. While there he became acquainted with Dr. 
Herbert Marsh, then Margaret Professor of Divinity, afterwards 
Bishop of Peterborough, a fine classic and first-rate German 
scholar. This last taste, combined with their mutual love of 



2 2 Charles Kings ley. 

literature, attracted the two men to each other, and when Dr. 
Marsh was raised to a bishopric he took an early opportunity of 
getting Mr. Kingsley into his diocese, and making him his Examin- 
ing Chaplain. His first cure was in the Fens, from which he 
removed to Holne, in Devonshire. 

Charles's mother, a remarkable woman, full of poetry and 
enthusiasm, was born in the West Indies, being the daughter of 
Nathan Lucas, of Farley Hall, Barbadoes, and Rushford Lodge, 
Norfolk. Keenly alive to the charms of scenery, and highly 
imaginative in her younger days, as she was eminently practical in 
maturer life, she believed that impressions made on her own mind^ 
before the birth of this child for whose coming she longed, by the 
romantic surroundings of her Devonshire home, would be mysteri- 
ously transmitted to him ; and in this faith, and for his sake as 
well as for her own, she luxuriated in the exquisite scenery of 
Holne and Dartmoor, the Chase, the hills, and the lovely Dart, 
which flowed below the grounds of the little parsonage, and gave 
herself up to the enjoyment of every sight and sound which she 
hoped would be dear to her child in after life. These hopes were 
realized, and though her little son left Holne when he was six 
weeks old, and never saw his birthplace till he was a man of thirty, 
it and every Devonshire scene and association had a mysterious 
charm for him through life. " I am," he was proud to say, " a 
West Country man born and bred." 

" We know, through the admirable labors of Mr. Galton," says 
Mr. Darwin in his " Descent of Man," " that genius which implies 
a wonderfully complex combination of high faculties tends to be 
inherited," and to prove this in the case of Charles Kingsley may 
not be altogether unimportant. " We are," he said himself, in 
1865, when writing to Mr. Galton on his book on Hereditary 
Talent, where the Kingsley family are referred to, 

"We are but the disjecta membra of a most remarkable pair of 
parents. Our talent, such as it is, is altogether hereditary. My 
father was a magnificent man in body and mind, and was said to 
possess every talent except that of using his talents. My mother, 
on the contrary, had a quite extraordinary practical and adminis- 
trative power ; and she combines with it, even at her advanced 
age (79), my father's passion for knowledge, and the sentiment and 
fancy of a young girl." .... 



Inherited Tastes. 23 

From his father's side he inherited his love of art, his sporting 
tastes, his fighting blood — the men of his family having been 
soldiers for generations, some of them having led troops to battle 
at Naseby, Minden, and elsewhere. And from the mother's side 
came, not only his love of travel, science and iitei^ature, and the 
romance of his nature, but his keen sense of humor, and a 
force and originality which characterized the women of her 
family of a still older generation. 

His maternal grandfather, sometime a Judge in Barbadoes, was 
a man of books and science, the intimate frieiid of Sir Joseph 
Banks and the distinguished John Hunter. He was also a great 
traveller, and had often crossed the Atlantic, in those days a 
more difficult work than it is now. He knew the West Indies 
intimately, and Demerara, where also he had estates, and had 
been with his friend Lord Rodney, on board H.M.S. " Formi- 
dable," in his great naval engagement off St. Lucia in 1782, "on 
the glorious 12th of April, when he broke Count de Grasse's line, 
destroying seven French ships of war and taking their com- 
mander prisoner." — ("At Last," Vol. I. p, 69). In 1812, at the 
great eruption of the Souffriere of St. Vincent, when resident on 
his estate in Barbadoes, eighty miles distant. Judge Lucas gave 
proof of his powers of observation and of scientific induction, by 
at once detecting the cause of the great earthquake wave which 
struck the island, and of the sudden darkness which spread terror 
among its inhabitants. " I have a letter," says his grandson, " writ- 
ten by one long since dead, who had powers of description of no 
common order," detailing the events of that awful day and night, 
and who, while the negroes were shrieking in the streets, and 
even the white folks caught the panic, and were praying at home 
and in the churches as they had never prayed before, thinking the 
last day had come, was above the dismay and superstitious panic 
which prevailed ; " he opened his window, found it stick, and felt 
upon the sill a coat of soft powder. 'The volcano at St, Vin- 
cent has broken out at last,' said the wise man, ' and this is the 
dust of it.' So he quieted his household and his negroes, lighted 
his candles, and went to his scientific books in that delight, mingled 
with awe not the less deep because it is rational and self-possessed, 
with which he, like other men of science, looked at the wonders 
of this wondrous world. "^ — ("At Last," Vol. I. p. 89). 



24 Charles Kingsley. 

His grandfather's reminiscences of the old war times, and stories 
of tropical scenes, were the delight of Charles's boyhood, and gave 
a coloring to his hfe. They woke up in him that longing to see the 
West Indies, which was at last accomplished ; and as he sailed the 
same seas under more peaceful circumstances, his enjoyment was 
enhanced by family associations and memories of the Past. 

But to return, Mr. Kingsley's next curacy on leaving Holne was 
at Burton-on-Trent, from whence he moved to Clifton, in Notting- 
hamshire, where he and his wife formed the acquaintance of the 
Penrose family. To this fact Miss Martineau alludes in her cor- 
respondence with his son 35 years later. 

" This evening I have heard of you in your infancy ! Is that 
not odd? The Arnolds have just returned after a two months' 
absence, and I went to Fox How to welcome them home. They 
have been into Lincolnshire, at the Penroses'. They say your 
parents were friends of the last generation of the Penroses, and 
they have been looking over some old letters, in one of which 
there is an account of a stormy passage of a river (the Trent in 
flood), when your mother's chief anxiety was about her ' little deli- 
cate Charles,' whom she wrapped in her shawl, going without it 
herself. So now, perhaps we know something about you that you 
did not know yourself." 

While curate of Clifton, the Bishop of Peterborough offered his 
friend the living of Barnack, one of the best in the diocese, to 
hold for his own son Herbert, then only 17. Such transactions 
were common in the church in those days, and Mr. Kingsley, 
thankfully, accepted the offer, and held the living for 6 years. 
Barnack Rectory was a fine old house, built in the fourteenth cen- 
tury, and thither the family removed. It contained a celebrated 
haunted room called Button Cap's, into which little Charles on 
one occasion was moved when ill of brain fever, which he had 
more than once, as a child. This naturally excited his imagina- 
tion, which was haunted years afterwards with the weird sights and 
sounds connected with that time in his memory. To this he traced 
his own strong disbelief in the existence of ghosts. For, as he 
used to say to his children in later years, he had heard too many 
ghosts in old Button Cap's room at Barnack, to have much respect 
for them, when he had once satisfied himself as to what they really 
were. On being questioned about having been born there by 



Barnack ajzd its Ghost Chamber. 25 

Mrs. Francis Pelham, he gave her his matured opinion of Button 
Cap in the following letter : 

EvERSLEY Rectory, 
" Mv DEAR Alice, — y««^ 2, 1864. 

" Of Button Cap — he lived in the Great North Room at Bar- 
nack (where I was not born). I knew him well. He used to 
walk across the room in flopping slippers, and turn over the leaves 
of books to find the missing deed, whereof he had defrauded the 
orphan and the widow. He was an old Rector of Barnack. 
Everybody heard him who chose. Nobody ever saw him ; but in 
spite of that, he wore a flowered dressing-gown, and a cap with a 
button on it. I never heard of any skeleton being found ; and 
Button Cap's history had nothing to do with murder, only with 
avarice and chea.tmg. 

" Sometimes he turned cross and played Polter-geist, as the 
Germans say, rolling the barrels in the cellar about with surprising 
noise, which was undigniired. So he was always ashamed of him- 
self, and put them all back in their places before morning. 

"I suppose he is gone now. Ghosts hate mortally a certificated 
National Schoolmaster, and (being a vain and peevish generation) 
as soon as people give up believing in them, go away in a huff — or 
perhaps some one had been laying phosphoric paste about, and he 
ate thereof and ran down to the pond ; and drank till he burst. 
He was rats. " Your affect. Uncle, 

"C. KiNGSLEY." 

Charles was a precocious child, and his poems and sermons date 
from four years old. His delight was to make a little pulpit in his 
nursery, arranging the chairs for an imaginary congregation, and 
putting on his pinafore as a surplice, gave little addresses of a 
rather severe tone of theology. His mother, unknown to him, 
took them down at the time, and showed them to the Bishop of 
Peterborough, who thought them so remarkable for such a young 
child, that he begged they might be preserved : predicting that the 
boy would grow up to be no common man. I'hese are among the 
specimens his mother kept. 

FIRST SERMON. 

[Four years old.] 

" It is not right to fight. Honesty has no chance against steal- 
ing. Christ has shown us true religion. We must follow God, 
and not follow the Devil, for if we follow the Devil we shall go 
into that everlasting fire, and if we follow God, we shall go to 
Heaven. When the tempter came to Christ in the Wilderness, 



26 " Charles Kings ley. 

and told him to make the stones into bread, he said, Get thee 
behind me, Satan. He has given us a sign and an example how 
we should overcome the Devil. It is written in the Bible that we 
should love our neighbor, and not covet his house, nor his ox, nor 
his ass, nor his wife, nor anything that is his. It is to a certainty 
that we cannot describe how thousands and ten thousands have 
been wicked ; and nobody can tell how the Devil can be chained 
in Hell. Nor can we describe how many men and women and 
children have been good. And if we go to Heaven we shall find 
them all singing to God in the highest. And if we go to hell, we 
shall find all the wicked ones gnashing and wailing their teeth, as 
God describes in the Bible. If humanity, honesty, and good 
religion fade, we can to a certainty get them back, by being good 
again. Religion is reading good books, doing good actions, and 
not teUing lies and speaking evil, and not calling their brother Fool 
and Raca. And if we rebel against God, He will to a certainty 
cast us into hell. And one day, when a great generation of people 
came to Christ in the Wilderness, he said, Yea ye generation of 
vipers ! " 

FIRST POEMS. 
[Four years and eight months old.] 

MORNING. 
When morning's beam first lights us, 
And the cock's shrill voice is undone. 
The owl flies from her retreat, 
And the bat does fly away, 
And morning's beam lightens every spray, 
The sun shows forth his splendid train. 
Evei"ybody is rising ; 
Boys and girls go to school ; 
Everybody is at work ; 
Everybody is busy. 
- The bee wakes from her sleep to gather honey. 
But the drone and the queen bee lie still 
In the hive, 
And a bee guards them. 
Be busy when thou canst ! 

NIGHT. 

When the dark forest glides along, 
When midnight's gloom makes everybody still, 
The owl flies out, 
And the bat stretches his wjng ; 

The lion roars ; 
The wolf and the tiger prowl about. 
And the hyena cries. 



Early Letters. 27 

Little can be gleaned of the nursery life at Barnack, except 
from an old nurse who lived in his father's family, and who remem- 
bers Charles as a very delicate child between six and seven years 
old, subject to dangerous attacks of croup, and remarkable for his 
thirst for knowledge and conscientiousness of feeling. 

" I have never forgotten one day," she says, " when he and his 
little brothers were playing together, and had a difference, which 
seldom happened. His mother, coming into the room, took the 
brothers' part, which he resented, and he said he wished she was 
not his mother. His grief afterwards was great, and he came cry- 
ing bitterly to the kitchen door to ask me to take him up to his 
room. The housemaid enquired what was the matter, and said 
his mamma would be sure to forgive him. ' She has forgiven me, 
but don't cant, Elizabeth (I saw you blush). It isn't mamma's for- 
giveness I want, but God's.' Poor little fellow, he was soon upon 
his knees when he got into his mother's room where he slept." 

a 

A boy friend, now a clergyman in Essex, recalls him about 
this time, repeating his Eatin lesson to his father in the study at 
Barnack, with his eyes fixed all the time on th- fl'-^ in the grate. 
'At last he could stand it no longer ; there was ^ _ . jc in the Latin, 
and Charles cried out, "I do declare, papa, there is pyrites in the 
coal." 

Among the few rehcs of the Barnack days is a little love letter 
written when he was five or six years old, which has lately come to 
light, having been carefully treasured for fifty years by a lady who 
was often staying with his parents at that time, and who captivated 
the child by her kindness and great beauty. 

Barnack. 
" My dear Miss Dade, — 

" I hope you are well is fanny well ? The house is com- 
pletly changed since you went. I think it is nearly 3 months 
since you went. Mamma sends her love to you and sally browne 
Herbert and geraled (his brothers) but I must stop here, because I 
have more letters of consequence to write & here I must pause. 

" Believe me always, 

" Your sincere friend, 
To Miss Dade. "Charles Kingsley." 

The subject of his childish affection recalled herself to him thirty 
years later, and the answer contains the only other mention of Bar- 
nack in his own hand. 



2 8 Charles Kiiigsley. 

Farley Court, 

Novembe?- 25, 1855. 

" My dear Madam, — 

" Many thanks for your most kind letter, which awoke in my 
mind a hundred sleeping recollections. Those old Barnack years 
seem now like a dream — perhaps because having lost the two 
brothers who were there with me, anecdotes of the place have not 
been kept up. Yet I remember every stone and brick of it, and 
you, too, as one of the first persons of whom I have a clear remem- 
brance, though your face has faded, I am ashamed to say, from 
mv memory. 

" But I am delighted to hear that my books have pleased, and 
still more that they have comforted you. They have been written 
from my heart in the hope of doing good ; and now and then I 
have (as I have now from you) testimony that my life as yet has 
not been altogether useless 

" I am just bringing out a Christmas book for my children with 
illustrations of my own. Will you a'ccept a cop)^, and allow me 
to renew our old friendship ? . . . . You speak of sorrows, 
and I have heard you have past through many. God grant that a 
quiet evening may succeed, for you, a stormy day. I am shocked 
at the amount of misery in a world which has, as yet, treated me 
so kindly. Yet it is but a sign that others are nearer to God than 
I, and therefore more chastened. 

"Yours ever truly, 

" C. KiNGSLEY." 

In 1830, when Charles was eleven years old, his father had to 
give up Barnack to his successor, Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley's parish 
work is still remembered there with aflfectionate respect, and they 
and their parishioners parted with mutual regret. In after years 
Professor Hall speaks of "Charles's excellent father as a type of 
the old English clergyman where the country gentleman forms the 
basis of the character which the minister of the gospel completes. 
Of such a class," he says, " were the Bishop (Otter) of Chiches- 
ter, Mr. Penrose, and Mr. Kingsley." Having caught ague in the 
Fens, Mr. Kingsley was advised to try the climate of Devonshire, 
and moved his family to Ilfracombe. But the Fen scenery \yas 
never obliterated from Charles's mind. It was connected, too, with 
his earliest sporting recollections, for his father, while an excellent 
parish priest, was a keen sportsman, and as soon as the boy was 
old enough, he was mounted on his father's horse in front of the 
keeper on shooting days to bring back the game bag. 

Wild duck, and even bittern and bustard, were to be found in 



Hereward the Wake. 29 

those days before the draining of the Fen, and butterflies of species 
now extinct, were not uncommon, and us^d to dehght the eyes of 
the young naturalist. The sunsets of the Great Fen, all the more 
striking from the wide sweep of horizon, were never forgotten, and 
the low flat scenery had always a charm for him in after life from 
the memory of those days. 

Thus the seeds were sown of the story of Hereward the Wake, 
written in after years, produced by the scenes and traditions of 
this period of boyhood. 



CHAPTER II. 

1830-1838. 

Aged 11-19. 

Life at Clovelly— School Life at Clifton— Bristol Riots— Their Effect on his Mind 
— Helston — Early Friendships — Letters from Rev. Derwent Coleridge and 
Rev. R. C. Powles — Move to Chelsea — Enters King's College, London. 

While the late rector of Barnack was staying at Ilfracombe, Sir 
James Hanilyn Williams, of Clovelly Court, presented him to the 
living of Clovelly, which he held till he removed to the rectory of 
St. Luke's, Chelsea, in 1836. 

Here a fresh life opened for Charles, whose impressions of nature 
had hitherto been gathered from the Eastern Counties and the 
scenery of the Fens. A new education began for him, a new world 
was revealed to him. The contrast between the sturdy Fen men 
and the sailors and fishermen of Clovelly — ^between the flat Eastern 
Counties and the rocky Devonshire coast, with its rich vegetation, 
its new fauna and flora, and the blue sea with its long Atlantic 
swell, filled him with delight and wonder. The boys had their boat 
and their ponies, and Charles at once plunged into the study of 
conchology, under the kind and scientific teaching of Dr. Turton, 
who lived in the neighborhood. 

His parents, both people of excitable natures and poetic feeling, 
shared in the boy's enthusiasm. The new elements of their life at 
iClovelly, the unique scenery, the impressionable character of the 
people and their singular beauty, the courage of the men and boys, 
and the passionate sympathy of the women in the wild life of their 
husbands and sons, threw the new charm of romance over their 
parish work. The people sprang to touch the more readily under 
the influence of a man, who, physically their equal, feared no danger ; 
and could steer a boat, hoist and lower a sail, ' shoot ' a herring net, 
and haifl a seine as one of themselves. 

His ministrations in church and in the cottages were acceptable 



Studying at Home. 3 1 

to dissenters as well as church people. And when the herring fleet 
put to sea, whatever the weather might be, the Rector, accom- 
panied by his wife and boys, would start off " down street," for 
the Quay, to give a short parting service, at which "men who 
worked," and "women who wept," would join in singing out of 
the old Prayer Book version the 121st Psalm as those only can, 
who have death and danger staring them in the face ; and who, 
"though storms be sudden, and waters deep," can say, 

" Then thou, my soul, in safety i-est, 
Thy Guardian will not sleep ; 
****** 

Shelter'd beneath th' Almighty wings 
Thou shalt securely rest." * 



Such were the scenes which colored his boyhood, were reflected 
in his after life, and produced "The Song of the Three Fishers," a 
song not the mere creation of his imagination, but the literal 
transcript of what he had seen again and again in Devonshire. 
"Now that you have seen Clovelly," he said to his wife, in 
T854, " you know what was the inspiration of my life before I met 
you." 

The boys had a private tutor at home, till, in 1831, Charles and 
his brother Herbert were sent to Clifton to a preparatory school 
under the Rev. John Knight, who describes him as "affectionate, 
gentle, and fond of quiet," which often made him leave the boys' 
school-room and take refuge with his tutor's daughters and their 
governess ; capable of making remarkable translations of Latin 
verse into English ; a passionate lover of natural history ; and 
only excited to vehement anger when the housemaid swept away 
as rubbish some of the treasures collected in his walks on the 
Downs. 

The Bristol Riots, which took place in the autumn of 1831, were 
the marked event in his life at Chfton. He had been a timid boy 
previous to this time, but the horror of the scenes which he wit- 
nessed seemed to wake up a new courage in him. When giving a 

* Brady and Tate's Version of the Psalms. 



32 Charles Kings ley. 

lecture at Bristol in 1858, he described the effect of all this on his 
mind.* 

While Charles was at Clifton^ his parents were still undecided 
whether to send him to a pubhc school. There was some talk of 
both Eton and Rugby. Dr. Hawtrey, who had heard through 
mutual friends of the boy's talent, wished to have him at Eton, 
where doubtless he would have distinguished himself. Dr. 
Arnold was at that time head-master of Rugby, but the strong Tory 
principles and evangelical views of his parents (in the former, 
Charles at that time sympathized) decided them against Rugby — a 
decision which their son deeply regretted for many reasons, when 
he grew up. It was his own conviction that nothing but a public 
school education would have overcome his constitutional shyness, 
a shyness which he never lost, and which was naturally increased by 
the hesitation in his speech. This hesitation was so sore a trial to 
him that he seldom entered a room, or spoke in private or public 
without a feeling, at moments amounting to terror, when he said he 
could have wished the earth would open and swallow him up there 
and then. 

At that time the Grammar School at Helston was under the 
head-mastership of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, son of Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge ; and Mr. Kingsley decided to send his son there. 
There Charles formed the dearest and most lasting friendship of his 
life, with Richard Cowley Powles, afterwards Fellow and Tutor of 
Exeter College, Oxford, and who in 1869, to the great joy and com- 
fort of his old schoolfellow, became one of his parishioners at 
Wixenford, in Eversley. At Helston, too, he found as second- 
master the Rev. Charles A. Johns, afterwards himself head-master, 
who made himself the companion of his young pupil, encouraging 
his taste, or rather passion for botany, going long rambles with him 
on the neighboring moors and on the sea coast, in search of wild 
flowers, and helping him in the stud}- which each loved so well. In 
later years, when both were living in Hampshire, Mr. Johns labored 
successfully for the cause of physical science in the diocese of Win- 
chester, where his name will long be remembered in conjunction 
once more with his former pupil and distinguished friend. 

* Miscellanies, Vol. II., p. 319, Great Cities, and their influence for good 
and evil. 



School Life at Helston. -^^i 

Of Charles's school life both Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Powles have 
contributed their recollections, which shall be given in their own 
words. 

REV. D. COLERIDGE TO MRS. KINGSLEY. 

Hanwell Rectory, 

October 7, 1875. 

" . . . . Charles and Herbert Kingsley were brought to 
Helston Grammar School, in Cornwall, in the year 1832, by their 
father the Rev. Charles Kingsley, then Rector of Clovelly, in Devon. 
Herbert died of heart-disease, brought on by a severe attack of 

rheumatism in 1834 Charles was a tall, slight boy, of 

keen visage, and of great bodily activity, high-spirited, earnest, and 
energetic, giving full promise of the intellectual powers, and moral 
qualities, by which he was afterwards distinguished. Though not 
a close student, he was an eager reader and enquirer, sometimes in 
very out of the way quarters, I once found him busily engaged 
with an old copy of ' Porphyry and lamblichus,' which he had fer- 
reted out of my library. 

" Truly a remarkable boy, original to the verge of eccentricity, 
and yet a thorough boy, fond of sport, and up to any enterprise — 
a genuine out-of-doors English boy. 

" His account of a walk or run would often display considerable 
eloquence — the impediment in his speech, already noticeable, 
though not, I think, so marked as it afterwards became, rather 
adding to the effect. We well remember his description of a hunt 
after some pigs, from which he returned (not an uncommon occur- 
rence) with his head torn with brambles, and his face beaming with 
fun and frolic. In manner he was strikingly courteous, and thus, 
with his wide and ready sympathies, and bright intelligence, was 
popular alike with tutor, schoolfellows, and servants. 

" His health was generally very good, but in the summer of 1834 
he had a violent attack of English cholera, which occasioned the 
more alarm as the Asiatic form of that malady had reached Helston. 
He bore it bravely, and recovered from it, but I beheve that the 
apprehension this occasioned led to his removal earlier than was 
intended, the distance from London to the extreme west of Corn- 
wall being felt by his parents to be too great. 

" After he left Cambridge he sent me the manuscript of his 
tragedy of ' Elizabeth of Hungary' for my criticism and approval. 
This was the last occasion in which I stood to him in any degree in 
the relation of a tutor or adviser. From this time I saw him only 
at intervals ; but when I paid him, as Canon of Westminster, my 
first, and, as it proved, alas ! my last visit, on the 17th of November, 
1874, he dung his arms about my neck, exclaiming, * Oh ! my dear 
3 



34 Charles Kings ley. 

old master ! my dear old master ! ' nor was he less affected at the 

sight of Mrs. Coleridge — Valeat in ceter?ium 

" Derwent Coleridge." 



REV. R. C. POWLES TO MRS. KINGSLEY. 

WlXENFORD, Oct. 30, 1875. 

" It was at Helston, in January, 1833, when we were each in our 
fourteenth year, that Charles and I trrst became acquainted. He 
and his brother Herbert had been spending the Christmas hohdays 
at school, and I was introduced to them, on my arrival from Lon- 
don, before any of our schoolfellows had returned. I remember 
the long, low room, dimly lighted by a candle on a table at the 
further end, where the brothers were sitting, engaged at the mo- 
ment of my entrance in a course of (not uncharacteristic) experi- 
ments with gunpowder. 

" Almost from the time of our first introduction Charles and I 
became friends, and subsequently we shared a study, so that we 
were a good deal together. Looking back on those schoolboy days, 
one can trace without difficulty the elements of character that made 
his maturer life remarkable. Of him more than of most men who 
have become famous it may be said, ' the boy was father of the man.' 
The vehement spirit, the adventurous courage, the love of truth, 
the impatience of injustice, the quick and tender sympathy, that 
distinguished the man's entrance on public hfe, were all in the boy, 
as any of those who knew him then and are still living will remem- 
ber ; and there was, besides, the same eagerness in the pursuit of 
physical knowledge, the same keen observation of the world around 
Jiim, and the same thoughtful temper of tracing facts to principles, 
which all who are familiar with his writings recognize as among his 
most notable characteristics. 

" For all his good qualities, Charles was not popular as a school- 
boy. He knew too much, and his mind was generally on a higher 
level than ours. He did not consciously snub those who knew less, 
but a good deal of unconscious snubbing went on ; all the moie 
resented, perhaps, because it was unconscious. Then, too, though 
strong and active, Charles was not expert at games. He never 
made " a score " at cricket. In mere feats of agility and adven- 
ture he was among the foremost ; and on one of the very last times 
I ever saw him he was recalling an old exploit in which he had 
only two competitors. Our play-ground was separated by a lane, 
not very narrow, and very deep, from a field on the opposite side. 
To jump from the play-ground wall to the wall opposite, and to 
jump back, was a considerable trial of nerve and muscle. The 
walls, which were not quite on a level, were rounded at the top, 
and a fall into the deep lane must have involved broken bones. 
This jump was one of Chai'les's favorite performances. Again, I 



School Life at Helston. 35 

remember his climbing a tall tree to take an egg from a hawk's 
nest. For three or four days he had done this with impunity. There 
came an afternoon, however, when the hawk was on her nest, and 
on the intruder's putting in his hand as usual the results were disas- 
trous. To most boys the surprise of the hawk's attack, apart from 
the pain inflicted by her claws, would have been fatal. They 
would have loosed their hold of the tree, and tumbled down. But 
Charles did not flinch. He came down as steadily as if nothing 
had happened, though his wounded hand was streaming with blood. 
It was wonderful how well he bore pain. On one occasion, having 
a sore finger, he determined to cure it by cautery. He heated the 
poker red-hot in the school room fire, and calmly appUed it two or 
three times till he was satisfied that his object was attained. 

"His own endurance of pain did not, however, make him care- 
less of suffering in others. He was very tender-hearted — often more 
so than his schoolfellows could understand ; and what they did not 
understand they were apt to ridicule. And this leads me to notice 
what, after all, I should fix on as the moral quality that pre- 
eminently distinguished him as a boy, the generosity with which he 
forgave offence. He was keenly sensitive to ridicule ; nothing 
irritated him more ; and he had often excessive provocation from 
those who could not enter into his feeUngs, or appreciate the work- 
ings of his mind. But with the moment of off'ence the memory of 
it passed away. He had no place for vindictiveness in his heart. 
Again and again I have seen him chafed to the intensest exaspera- 
tion by boys with whom half an hour afterwards he has mixed with 
tlie frankest good humor. 

•' How keen his feelings were none of his surviving schoolfellows 
will forget, who were with us at the time his brother Herbert died. 
Herbert had had an attack of rheumatic fever, but was supposed to 
be recovering and nearly convalescent, when one afternoon he 
suddenly passed away. Charles was summoned from the room 
where we were all sitting in ignorance of what had just taken place. 
All at once a cry of anguish burst upon us, such as, after more than 
forty years, I remember as if it were yesterday. There was no need 
to tell the awe-struck listeners what had happened. 

" Thus far I. have spoken rather of Charles's moral tlian of his 
intellectual qualities. I must add something of these latter. His chief 
taste was, as I have hinted, for physical science. He w as fond of 
studying all objects of the natural world, but for botany and geology 
he had an absolute enthusiasm. Whatever time he could spare 
from less congenial studies, and from ordinary play-ground games, 
which never specially attracted him, he gave to these. He liked 
nothing better than to sally out, hammer in hand and his botanical 
tin slung round his neck, on some long expedition in quest of new 
plants, and to investigate the cliffs within a few miles of Helston, 
dear to every geologist. 



2,6 Charles Kings ley. 

" For the study of language he had no great Hking. Later on, 
C/icek and Latin interested him, because of their subject-matter; 
Init for classics, in the school-boy sense of the term, he had no turn. 
He would work hard at thezii by fits and starts — on the eve of an 
examination, for instance ; but his industry was intermittent and 
against the grain. Nor do I think he had any such turn for mathe- 
matics as led hiiii to make the most of the opportunities we had for 
that branch of study. His passion was for natural science, and for 
art. With regard to the former I think his zeal was led by a strong 
religious feeling — a sense of the nearness of God in His works. 

" R. Cowley Powles." 

To his mother he writes during the early days of his school- 
life :— 

" I am now quite settled and very happy. I read my Bible 
every night, and try to profit by what I read, and I am sure I do. 
I am more happy now than I have been for a long time ; but I do 
not like to talk about it, but to prove it by my conduct. 

" I am keeping a journal of my actions and thoughts, and I hope 
it will be useful to me." 

His poetical compositions, which were many at this time, were 
all given to his friend Mr. Powles, who has carefully preserved 
them. Charles kept no note of them himself, and would not have 
thought them worth keeping. But one more must be added, as it 
shows the working of the boy's mind at fifteen. He called it him- 
self 

HYPOTHESES HYPOCHONDRIACS. 

And should she die, her grave should be 

Upon the bare top of a sunny hill, 

Among the moorlands of her own fair land, 

Amid a ring of old and moss-grown stones 

In gorse and heather all embosomed. 

There should be no tall stone, no marbled tomb 

Above her gentle corse ; — the ponderous pile 

Would press too rudely on those fairy limbs. 

The turf should lightly lie, that marked her home, 

A sacred spot it would be — -every bird 

That came to watch her lone grave should be holy. 

The deer should browse around her undisturbed ; 

The whin bird by, her lonely nest should build 

All fearless ; for in life she loved to see 



Hypotheses Hypochondriaccs. 2>7 

Happiness in all things — 

And we would come on summer days 

When all around was bright, and set us down 

And think of all that lay beneath that turf 

On which the heedless moor-bird sits, and whistles 

His long, shrill, painful song, as though he plained 

For her that loved him and his pleasant hills, 

And we would dream again of bygone days 

Until our eyes should swell with natural tears 

For brilliant hopes — all faded into air ! 

As, on the sands of Irak, near approach 

Destroys the traveller's vision of still lakes, 

And goodly streams reed-clad, and meadows green ; 

And leaves behind the drear reality 

Of shadeless, same, yet everchanging sand ! 

And when the sullen clouds rose thick on high 

Mountains on mountains rolling — and dark mist 

Wrapped itself round the hill- tops like a shroud. 

When on her grave swept by the moaning wind 

Bending the heather-bells — then would I come 

And watch by her, in silent loneliness, 

And smile upon the storm — as knowing well 

The lightning's ilash would surely turn aside, 

Nor mar the lowly mound, where peaceful sleeps 

All that gave life and love to one fond heart ! 

I talk of things that are not ; and if prayers 

By night and day availeth from my weak lips, 

Then should they never be ! till I was gone, 

Before the friends I loved, to my long home. 

O pardon me, if aught I say too much ; my mind 

Too often strangely turns to ribald mirth. 

As though I had no doubt nor hope beyond — 

Or brooding melancholy cloys my soul 

With thoughts of days misspent, of wasted time 

And bitter feelings swallowed up in jests. 

Then strange and fearful thoughts flit o'er my brain 

By indistinctness made more terrible. 

And incubi mock at me with fierce eyes 

Upon my couch : and visions, crude and dire, 

Of planets, suns, millions of miles, infinity, 

Space, time, thought, being, blank nonentity, 

Things incorporeal, fancies of the brain, 

Seen, heard, as though they were material, 

All mixed in sickening mazes, trouble me. 

And lead my soul away from earth and heaven 

Until I doubt whether I be or not ! 



38 Charles Kings ley. 

And then I see all frightful shapes — lank ghosts, 

Hydras, chimeras, krakens, wastes of sand, 

Herbless and void of living voice — tall mountains 

Cleaving the skies with height immeasurable. 

On which perchance I climb for infinite years, broad seas, 

Studded with islands numberless, that stretch 

Beyond the regions of the sun, and fade 

Away in distance vast, or dreary clouds. 

Cold, dark, and watery, where wander I for ever ! 

Or space of ether, where I hang for aye ! 

A speck, an atom — inconsumable — 

Immortal, hopeless, voiceless, powerless ! 

And oft I fancy I am weak and old, 

And all who loved me, one by one, are dead, 

And I am left alone — and cannot die ! 

Surely there is no rest on earth for souls 

Whose dreams are like a madman's ! I am young 

And much is yet before me — after years 

May bring peace with them to my weary heart ! 

C. K. 

In 1836 the happy free country life of Clovelly was exchanged 
for London work and the rectory of St, Luke's, Chelsea, to which 
Lord Cadogan had presented Mr. Kingsley. There the family 
settled, and Charles was entered, as a day student, at King's Col- 
lege, London, where, says Dr. Barry, the present principal, in a 
recent letter : — 

" He became a member of the General Literature Department 
of the College — that is, the department for those who are simply 
pursuing a liberal education (with a much larger admixture of 
mathematics, modes, languages, and physical science, than was then 
usual), after leaving school before settling to a profession or going 
to the university. ... It was a great pleasure to me, he adds, 
to have been able to invite one to whose writings I owe so much, 
to preach for us at the College in 1873, and to allow us to add his 
name to our list of Honorary fellows. . . ." 

It was a great grief to Charles to leave the West Country and 
the society of those who were all ready to help him in his botani- 
cal and geological studies, and in picking up the old traditions 
of the neighborhood. The parting with his dear friend Cowley 
Powles, the loss of the intellectual atmosphere of Mr, Coleridge's 
house and his valuable library, and, above all, of the beautiful nat- 



Removal to Chelsea. 39 

ural surroundings of both Helston and Clovelly, was bitterly felt. 
The change to a London rectory, with its ceaseless parish work, 
the discussion of which is so wearisome to the young, the middle- 
class society of a suburban district as Chelsea then was, the polem- 
ical conversation all seemingly so narrow and conventional in its 
tone, chafed the boy's spirit, and had anything but a happy effect 
on his mind. His parents were busy from morning till night, the 
house full of district visitors and parish committees. In short, 
Chelsea was a prison from which he thankfully escaped two years 
later to the freer life of Cambridge. 

To his dear friend and schoolfellow at Helston he thus pours 
out his heart : — 

Chelsea Rectory. 

" I find a doleful difference in the society here and at Helston, 
paradoxical as it may appear. . . . We have nothing but cler- 
gymen (very good and sensible men, but), talking of nothing but 
parochial schools, and duties, and vestries, and curates, &c., &c., 
&c. And as for women, there is not a woman in all Chelsea, leav- 
ing out my own mother, to be compared to Mrs. C, or ; and 

the girls here have got their heads crammed full of schools, and 
district visiting, and baby linen, and penny clubs. Confound ! ! ! 
and going about among the most abominable scenes of filth, wretch- 
edness, and indecency, to visit the poor and read the Bible to them. 
My own mother says the places they go into are tit for no girl to 
see, and that they should not know such things exist, 

I regret here, then, as you may suppose, Mrs. D., and ; but, 

alas ! here are nothing but ugly splay-footed beings, three-fourths 
of whom can't sing, and the other quarter smg miles out of tune, 
with voices like love-sick parrots. Confound ! ! ! I have got here 
two or three good male acquaintances who kill the time ; one is 
Sub Secretar}' to the Geological Society. . . . 

"As you may suppose all this clerical conversation (to which I 
am obliged to listen) has had a slight effect in settling my opinion 
on these subjects, and I begin to hate these dapper young-ladies- 
preachers like the devil, for I am sickened and enraged to see 
' silly women blown about by every wind,' falling in love with the 
preacher instead of his sermon, and with his sermon instead of the 
Bible. I could say volumes on this subject tiiat should raise both 
your contempt and indignation. I am sickened with its day-by-day 
occurrence.* As you may suppose, this hatred is narg6dev, here- 



* These early experiences made him most careful in after life, when in a par- 
ish of his own, to confine all talk of parish business to its own hours, and never, 



40 Charles Kingsley. 

ditary, and the governor is never more rich than when he unbends 
on these points." 

For the next two years he had what he called hard grinding 
work at King's College, walking up there every day from Chelsea, 
reading all the way, and walking home late, to study all the even- 
ing. In his spare hours, which were few and far between, he com- 
forted himself for the lack of all amusement by devouring every 
book he could lay hands on. His parents were absorbed in their 
parish work, and their religious views precluded all public amuse- 
ments for their children : so that the only variety in Charles's Hfe 
was during the summer holidays, when his father took him to Dur- 
ham to stay at his friend Dr. Wellesley's, or to Clovelly. 

as he called it, '* talk shop " before his children, or lower the tone of conversa- 
tion, by letting it degenerate into mere parochial and clerical gossip. 



CHAPTER III. 

1838—42. 

Aged 19-23. 

Life at Cambridge — Visit to Oxfordshire^Undergraduate Days — Decides to take 
Orders — Takes his Degree — Correspondence — Letters from Cambridge 
Friends. 

In the autumn of 1838 Charles Kingsley left King's College, 
London, and went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where 
he soon gained a scholarship, being first in his year in the May 
Examinations, and in<th.e joy of his heart he writes home : — 

Magdalene College, 

^ay 31. 1839- 

"You will be delighted to hear that I 2m\ first in classics and 
mathematics also, at the examinations, which has not happened in 
the College for several years. I shall bring home prizes, and a 
decent portion of honor — the King's College men (K.C. London) 
are all delighted. I am going to stay up here a few days longer if 
you will let me. Mr. Wand has oifered to help me with my second 
)'ear's subjects, so I shall read conic sections and the spherical 
trigonometry very hard while 1 am here. I know you and mamma 
will be glad to hear of my success, so you must pardon the wild- 
ness of my letter, for I am so happy I hardly know what to say. 
You know I am not accustomed to be successful. I am going 
to-day to a great fishing party at Sir Charles Wale's, at Shelford." 

The prize he refers to was a fine edition of Plato in eleven 
volumes. " His selection of such a book," says Mr. Mynors 
Bright, an undergraduate friend, afterwards senior tutor of Mag- 
dalene, in a recent letter to the Editor, 

" Speaks well for his judgment and taste. I recollect one of the 
examiners, a Fellow of the College, telling me, that whatever 
papers Kingsley sent up to any examination always showed marks 
of talent. As you must know, he was alwa3's of an excitable 



42 Charles Kings ley. 

temperament. I recollect his telling me that he first began to 
smoke at Cambridge, and that it had a wonderful effect on his 
nervous system, and enabled him to work. He did not get a 
Fellowship, because there was no vacancy for him, till he obtained 
one which, no doubt, was more pleasing to him. When he was 
about to return as Professor to Cambridge, I was very much 
amused one morning, on saying to the College cook, ' We have a 
great man coming to us again, Mr. Kingsley ; do you recollect 
anything of him ? ' He thought a minute, and then answered : 
' Mr. Kingsley — Mr. Kingsley. Yes, I recollect him. I used to 
feed a dog of his, and he used to come and say' (trying to imitate 
Kingsley' s voice), 'You con — founded beast, why can't you earn 
your own living, and not oblige me to pay for you ! ' " 

In the summer of 1839 ^'^^ Rector of Chelsea took duty, for the 
sake of country air and change, near some intimate friends, at the 
village of Checkenden, in Oxfordshire, and settled in the little 
parsonage house for two months with his wife and his family, 
Charles, then an undergraduate of Cambridge, Gerald in the 
Royal Navy (since dead), a daughter, and two schoolboys. On 
the 6th of July, Charles and his future wife met for the first time- 
" That was my real wedding day," he said, some fifteen years after- 
wards. 

He was then full of religious doubts ; and his face, with its 
unsatisfied hungering look, bore witness to the state of his mind. 
It had a sad longing expression, too, as if he had all his life been 
looking for a sympathy he had never found — a rest which he never 
would attain in this world. His peculiar character had not been 
understood hitherto, and his heart had been half asleep. It woke 
up now, and never slept again. For the first time he could speak 
with perfect freedom, and be met with answering sympathy. And 
gradually as the new friendship (which yet seemed old — from the 
first more of a recognition than an acquaintance) deepened into 
intimacy, every doubt, every thought, every failing, every sin, as 
he would call it, was laid bare. Counsel was asked and given, all 
things in heaven and earth discussed ; and as new hopes dawned, 
the look of hard defiance gave way to a wonderful humility and 
tenderness, which were his characteristics, with those who under- 
stood him, to his dying day. 

He was just hke his own Lancelot in Yeast, in that summer of 
1839 — a bold thinker, a bold rider, a most chivalrous gentleman — 



Visit to Oxfordshire. 43 

sad, shy, and serious habitually; in conversation at one moment 
brilliant and impassioned ; the next reserved and unapproachable ; 
by turns attracting and repelling, but pouring forth to the friend 
whom he could trust, stores of thought and feeling and information 
on every sort of unexpected subject which seemed boundless. It 
was a feast to the imagination and intellect to hold communion 
with Charles Kingsley even at the age of twenty ; the originality 
with which he treated a subject was startling, and his genius illumi- 
nated every object it approached, whether he spoke of " the 
delicious shiver of those aspen leaves," on the nearest tree, or of 
the deepest laws of humanity and the controversies of the day. 
Of that intercourse truly might these friends each say with Goethe 
— " For the first time, I may well say, I carried on a conversation ; 
for the first time, was the inmost sense of my words returned to 
me, more rich, more full, more comprehensive from another's 
mouth. What I had been groping for, was rendered clear to me ; 
what I had been thinking, I was taught to see. . . ." 

The Oxford Tracts had lately appeared, and, though he dis- 
cussed them from the merely human and not the religious point of 
view, he fiercely denounced the ascetic view of sacred human ties 
which he foresaw would result from them. Even then he detected 
in them principles which, as he expressed years afterwards in his 
preface to Hypatia, must, if once adopted, sap the very foundation 
of the two divine roots of the Church, the ideas of family and 
national life. 

Two months of such intercourse passed away only too quickly, 
and though from this time for the next four years and a half, the 
friends met but seldom, and corresponded at rare intervals, a new 
life had dawned for both, which neither absence nor sorrow, differ- 
ence of religious opinions, opposition of friends, or adverse cir- 
cumstances, could extinguish. Before he left Oxfordshire he was 
so far shaken in his doubts, that he promised to read his Bible once 
more — to pra}^ — to open his heart to the Light, if the Light would 
but come. All, however, was dark for a time, and the conflict 
between hopes and fears for the future, and between faith and un- 
belief, was so fierce and bitter, that when he returned to Cam- 
bridge, he became reckless, and nearly gave up all for lost : he 
read little, went in for excitement of every kind — boating, hunting, 
driving, fencing, boxing, duck-shooting in the Fens, — anything to 



44 Charles Kingsley. 

deaden the remembrance of the happy past, which just then 
promised no future. More than once he had nearly resolved to 
leave Cambridge and go out to the Far West and live as a wild 
prairie hunter; to this he refers when for the first time he found 
himself on the prairies of America in 1874. But through all, God 
kept him in those dark days for a work he little dreamed of. 

He had many friends in the University who took delight in his 
society, some for his wit and humor, others for his sympathy on art, 
and deeper matters, but they knew nothing of the real state of his 
mind. "He was very popular," writes an intimate undergraduate 
friend, " amongst all classes of his companions, he mixed freely 
with all, the studious, the idle, the clever, and the reverse, a most 
agreeable, companion, full of information of all kinds, and abound- 
ing in conversation. Whatever he engaged in, he threw his whole 
energy into; he read hard at times, but enjoyed sports of all 
kinds, fishing, shooting, riding, and cards." A letter from the Rev. 
E. Pitcairn Campbell, gives a graphic account of their under- 
graduate life just then. 

Aston Lodge, November, 1875. 

" My first acquaintance with your husband was formed sometime 
in 1840. 

" We happened to be sitting together one night on the top of 
one of those coaches which in our time were subscribed for by a 
number of men 10s. or ^\ each for various expeditions into the 
Fens — for instance, when Whittlesea lay broadly under water — Sir 
Colman Rashleigh, the Dykes of Cornwall, or other driving men 
taking the management, wearing wonderful coats and hats, and 
providing the horses. I remember the drive very well. The 
moon was high, and the air was frosty, and we talked about sport 
and natural history, while the cornopean professor astonished the 
natives with what he called Mr. Straw's (!) walzes. 

" At last we got upon fishing, and I invited your husband to 
come to my rooms to view some very superior tackle which had 
been left me by a relative. He came at once, inviting me to join 
him in some of his haunts up the Granta and the Cam, where he 
had friends dwelling, and hospitable houses open to him. 

" I never shall forget our first expedition. I was to call him, 
and for this purpose I had to cHmb over the wall of Magdalene 
College. This I did at two a.m., and about three we were both 
climbing back into the stonemason's yard, and oft" through Trump- 
ington, in pouring rain all the way, nine miles to Duxford. 

" We reached about 6.30. The water was clouded by rain, and 



Personal Traits. 45 

I in courtesy to your husband yielded my heavier rod in order that 
he might try the lower water with the minnow. 

" He was, however, scarcely out of sight, before I spied, under 
the alders, some glorious trout rising to caterpillars dropping frorn 
the bushes. In ten minutes I had three of these fine fellows on 
the bank — one of them weighed three pounds, others two pounds 
each. We caught nothing after the rain had ceased. 

"This performance set me up in your husband's opinion, and 
he took me with him to Shelford, where dwelt Sir Charles Wale. 
It was at Shelford that I executed the feat to which he refers in his 
Miscellanies.* 

" The Times coach used to take us up to breakfast, and many a 
good trout rewarded our labors. Then we dined with Sir Charles 
at five P.M., and walked back to Cambridge in the evening. Oh ! 
what pleasant talk was his, so full of poetry and beauty ! and, what 
I admired most, such boundless information. 

" Besides these expeditions we made others on horseback, and 
I think at times we followed the great Professor Sedgwick in his 
adventurous rides, which the livery stable-keepers called joUy- 
gizing ! f The old professor was generally mounted on a bony 
giant, whose trot kept most of us at a hand gallop. Gaunt and 
grim, the brave old Northern man seemed to enjoy the fun as 
much as we did — his was not a hunting seat — neither his hands 
nor his feet ever seemed exactly in the right place. But when we 
surrounded him at the trysting-place, even the silliest among us 
acknowledged that his lectures wei^e glorious. It is too true that 
our method of reaching those trysting-places was not legitimate, 
the greater number preferring the field to the road, so that the un- 
happy owners of the horses found it necessary to charge more for 
a day's jolly-gizing than they did for a day's hunting. 

" There was another professor whose lectures we attended to- 
gether, but he was of a different type and character — one who 
taught the gentle art of self-defence — a negro of pure blood, who 
appeared to have more joints in his back than are usually allotted 
to humanity. In carrying out the science which he taught, we 
occasionally discolored each other's countenances, but we thought 
that we benefited by these lectures in more senses than one. We 
had our tempers braced, yea, even our Christian charity ; for in- 
stance, when we learnt to feel as we knew we ought for those who 
had just punished us. 

"To crown our sports, we have now only to add the all-absorb- 
ing boating, and, dear Mrs. Kingsley, you will have reason to think 
that we have so filled up our time, as to have little left for legiti- 

* Chalk Stream Studies, Prose Idylls, p. 83. 

\ Professor Sedgwick gave Geological Field Lectures on horseback to a class 
in the neigliborhood of Cambridge. 



46 Charles Kingsley. 

mate study ; and so, alack, it was with me, but not so, I fancy, 
with your husband. However idle we both were at first, he took 
to reading in sufficient time to enable him to realize the degree he 

wanted After his examination, I altogether lost sight of 

your husband until, about the year 1865, I wrote to him and en- 
quired if the passage in the Chalk Stream studies did not refer to 
me. I long to find his reply — it was a charming letter." 

Now began his difficulties in theology about the Trinity, and 
other important doctrines. He revolted from what seemed to 
him then, the " bigotry, cruelty, and quibbling," of the Athanasian 
Creed, that very Creed which in after years was his stronghold ; 
and he could get no clergyman to help him with advice he could 
rely on, on these points. Speaking of the clergy with whom he 
came in contact, and of his religious doubts, he writes, 

" This is not so much beyond reason, as it is beyond the proper 
bounds of induction. From very insufficient and ambiguous 
grounds in the Bible, they seem unjustifiably to have built up a 
huge superstructure, whose details they have filled in according to 
their own fancies, or alas 1 too often according to their own in- 
terest Do not be angry. I know I cannot shake you, 

and I think you will find nothing flippant or bitter — no vein of 
noisy and shallow blasphemy in my doubts. I feel solemn and sad 
on the subject. If the philosophers of old were right, and if I am 
right in my religion, alas ! for Christendom ! and if I am wrong, 

alas ! for myself! It is a subject on which I cannot jest 

I will write soon, and tell you some of my temptations." 

Cambridge, November, 1840. 

" I have struggled to alter lately, and my alteration has been 
remarked with pleasm-e by some, with sneers by others. ' Kings- 
ley, they say-, is not half as reckless as he used to be.' .... 
There is another benefit you have conferred upon me — careless- 
ness for the opinion of the unworthy. Formerly, by a strange 
paradox, which I see in too many minds, I was servile to the 
opinions of the very persons I despised. I had no rule of morality 
felt and believed. My morals were only theoretical, and public 
opinion even more than self-interest, my only God. But now 
. . . . that I have found a centralizing point connecting my theo- 
retical notions of morality with my affections and my emotions, I 
begin to find that there is an object to be attained in morahty be- 
yond public esteem and self-interest — namely, the love and the 
esteem of the good, and, consequently, of God himself. The love 
and the esteem of the Deity, which I conceive is almost the same 



Doubts and Diffictdties. 47 

thing as loving good for its own sake, I cannot fiilly appreciate yet, 
or rather my natural feelings of the just and the beautiful, have, as 
you say, been dimmed by neglect." .... 

Janitary, 1841. 

" .... I have an instinctive, perhaps a foolish fear, of any- 
thing like the use of religious phraseology, because I am sure that 
if these expressions were used by any one placed as I now am to 
me, I should doubt the writer's sincerity. I find that if I allow 
myself ever to use, even to my own heart, those vague and trite 
expressions, which are generally used as the watchwords of religion, 
their familiarity makes me careless, or rather dull to their sense, 
while their specious glibness makes me prove myself alternately 
fiend or angel, hurrying me on in a mass of language, of whose 
precise import I have no vital knowledge. This is their eff"ect on 
me. We know too well what it often is on others. Believe, then, 
every word I write as the painful expression of new ideas and 
feelings in a mind unprejudiced by conventionality in language, 
or (I hope) in thought. ... I ask this because I am afraid of 
the very suspicion of talking myself into a fancied conversion. I 
see people do this often, and I see them fall back again. And 
this, perhaps, keeps me in terror lest I should have merely mis- 
taken the emotions of a few passionate moments for the calm 

convictions which are to guide me through eternity I 

have, therefore, in order to prevent myself mistaking words and 
feelings for thoughts, never made use of technicalities. 

"I have not much time for poetry,* as 1 am reading steadily. 
How I envy, as a boy, a woman's life at the corresponding age- 
so free from mental control, as to the subjects of thought and 
reading — so subjected to it, as to the manner and the tone. We, 
on the other hand, are forced to drudge at the acquirement of 
confessedly obsolete and useless knowledge, of worn-out philoso- 
phies, and scientific theories long exploded — while our finer senses 
and our conscience are either scared by sensuality or suffered to 
run riot in imagination and excitement, and at last to find every 
woman who has made even a moderate use of her time, far beyond 
us in true philosophy. 

"I wish I were free from this university system, and free to fol- 
fow such a course of education as Socrates, and Bacon, and More, 
and Milton have sketched out." .... 

Cambridge, Febrtia7-y, 1841. 

" I strive daily and hourly to be calm. Every few minutes to 
stop myself forcibly, and recall my mind to a sense of where I am 

* During these years of trial and suspense he wrote little poetry. " Twill 
Stars" and " Palinodia" are all that mark the time. 



48 Charles Kingsley. 

— where I am going — and whither I ought to be tending. This is 
most painful discipHne, but wholesome, and much as I dread to 
look inward, I force myself to it continually. .... I am read- 
ing seven to eight hours a day. I have refused hunting and driv- 
ing, and made a solemn vow against cards. My trial of this new 
mode of life has been short, but to have begun it is the greatest 
difficulty. There is still much more to be done, and there are 
more pure and unworldly motives of improvement, but actions 
will pave the way for motives, almost as much as motives do for 
actions 

" You cannot understand the excitement of animal exercise 
from the mere act of cutting wood or playing cricket to the 
manias of hunting or shooting or fishing. On these things more 
or less most young men live. Every moment which is taken from 
them for duty or for reading is felt to be lost — to be so much time 
sacrificed to hard circumstance. And even those who have calmed 
from age, or from the necessity of attention to a profession, which 
has become custom, have the same feelings flowing as an under- 
current in their minds ; and, if they had not, they would neither 
think nor act like men. They might be pure and good and kind, 
but they would need that stern and determined activity, without 
which a man cannot act in an extended sphere either for his own 
good, or for that of his fellow-creatures. When I talk, then, of 
excitement, 1 do not wish to destroy excitability, but to direct it 
into the proper channel, and to bring it under subjection. I have 
been reading Plato on this very subject, and you would be charmed 
with his ideas 

"Of the existence of this quality (excitability) there can be no 
doubt, and you must remember the peculiar trial which this" 
(alluding to the necessity for hard reading and giving up all amuse- 
ment for the time being) " proves to a young man whose super- 
fluous excitement has to be broken in like that of a dog or a horse 
— for it is utterly animal. 

At this time his physical strength was great. He walked one 
day from Cambridge to London, fifty-two miles, starting early and 
arriving in London at 9 p.m., with ease ; and for many years 
afterwards a walk of twenty or twenty-five miles in a fresh country 
was a real refreshment to him. 

Speaking of "renewed violent struggles to curb" himself, which 
made him "feel more agonizingly weak than ever," he says : 

Cambridge, February, 1841. 

" As for my degree, I can yet take high honors in the Univer 
sity, and ought to get my fellowship ,: but I was very idle — and 
very sinful — my first year. 



Reading and Resolutions. 49 

" I attend morning chapel at eight ; read from nine to one or 
two ; attend chapel generally again at live. I read for some hours 
in the evening. As to my studies interesting me, if you knew the 
system and the subjects of study, you would feel that to be impos- 
sible. ... I wish to make duty the only reason for working, 
but my heart is in very different studies." .... 

May^ 1 84 1. 

" My only reasons for working for a degree are that I may enter 
the world with a certain prestige which may get me a living sooner. 
. . . . Several of my intimate friends here, strange to say, are 
going into the Church, so that our rooms, when we are not read- 
ing, are full of clerical conversation. One of my friends, the son 
of the English Minister at Turin, goes up for ordination next week. 
How I envy him his change of life. I feel as if, once in the 
Church, I could cling so much closer to God. I feel more and 
more daily that a clergyman's life is the one for which both my 
physique and morale were intended — that the profession will check 
and guide the faulty parts of my mind, while it gives full room for 
my energy — that energy which had so nearly ruined me ; but will 
now be devoted utterly, I hope, to the service of God. My views 
of theoretical religion are getting more clear daily, as I see more 
completely the necessity of faith. What a noble mind Novalis's 
must have been. Do you know his works ? or have you read the 

review of them in Carlyle ? If not, pray do To publish 

a translation of them will be one of the first results' of my German 
studies, after my degree 

" I forgot to thank you for the books. I am utterly delighted 
with them." 

The books referred to were Carlyle's works, and Coleridge's 
"Aids to Reflection," Carlyle's "French Revolution," sent by 
the same friend, had had a remarkable effect on his mind before 
he decided upon taking holy orders, in establishing and intensifying 
his belief in God's righteous government of the world. The " Mis- 
cellanies," and "Past and Present," followed it up, and were most 
useful to him, as was Maurice's "Kingdom of Christ," which she 
sent at a later period. 

Sully, June 12, 1841. 

"My birth-night. I have been for the last hour on the sea-shore, 
not dreaming, but thinking deeply and strongly, and forming deter- 
minations which are to affect my destiny through time and through 
eternity. Before the sleeping earth and the sleepless sea and stars 
I have devoted myself to God ; a vow never (if He gives me the 
faitli I pray for) to be recalled." .... 
4 



50 Charles Kingsley. 

A great change had long been coming over him, to which in a 
•previous letter he points when he speaks of himself as 

"Saved — saved from the wild pride and darkling tempests of 
scepticism, and from the sensuality and dissipation into which my 
own rashness and vanity had hurried me before I knew you. Saved 
from a hunter's life on the Prairies, from becoming a savage, and 
perhaps worse. Saved from all this, and restored to my country 
and my God, and able to believe. And I do beheve, firmly and 
practically, as a subject of prayer, and a rule of every action of my 
life." .... 

The Rev. James Montagu, Rector of Hawkwell, an old College 
friend, writing to the editor in 1876, refers to this period thus : 

" Our old Cambridge intercourse was to me very pleasant. There 
was something in dear Charles's young days then, which drew me 
(his senior by some six or eight years) v&xj much to him. There 
was growing up in his brain, then indistinct and shadowy, much of 
that which came out in riper manhood. There was a dreaminess 
about him at times which caused remarks to be made about him. 
1 have had it said to me, ' You seem to be much with Kingsley, is 
he not a little odd and cracky?' and I can remember my answer 
— 'It would take two or three of our heads to mend the crack.' 
He would come up to my room with, 'Are you busy, Monty?' 
* Not too busy for a chat with you, Kingsley.' And then I must 
tell you how artfully and cunningly I used to slip paper and pen- 
cils within his reach ; for I knew his wont to go on sketching all 
sorts of fanciful things, while we worried our young heads over 
other dreams as fanciful. Many of those pleasant memories come 
cropping out at times, though long years have i^assed — and long 
years make memory weak. Since those days, from his busy life, 
our intercourse was but slight. I have not forgotten the few pleas- 
ant days spent at Eversley ; nor shall I ever lose the pride I feel 
in being called Charles Kingsley' s friend." 

His every-day college life, his love of art and drawing powers 
are recalled by another friend, now distinguished himself, as archi- 
tect of St. Paul's Cathedral, Frank Penrose, Esq., F.S.A., &c., &c. 

"My first acquaintance with Charles Kingsley was at South Clif- 
ton, Lincolnshire, when I must have had some romps with him as 
a little boy, say in 1823 ; but I saw nothing of him from that time 
till he came up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, as a freshman, 
in October, 1838, with me, and I welcomed him as something more 



Undergraduate Days. 51 

than a casual acquaintance. We began duly attending the Col- 
lege lectures, and I saw at once that he was a man of no ordinary 
talents. I was ultimately the best of my years in mathematics ; 
but, if I remember rightly, he at first held his own on those sub. 
jects, and it was by his own vacating the ground that the tortoise 

gave him the go-by in that department I was always 

interested in your husband's conversation, and he was, I think, the 
only man in Cambridge with whom I ever got any art talk. . . 
. . In the boating department he was under my command, as 
captain of the Magdalene Boat Club, in 1840-41 ; he never, to 
the best of my belief, rowed in the races of our first boat. In those 
of the second boat he did constantly, and was regular on practis- 
ing days What I remember best are his sketches of 

figure subjects — his showing me his Cambridge English verse prize 
poem, the Crusades. It was unsuccessful, but it showed the latent 
poetic genius. 

" I must add his dog Muzzie, a clever, sedate-looking grey 
Scotch terrier, of whom he was very fond. My last shall be a 
negative point, and you will not think it unacceptable. I never 
saw him do anything that I should have any objection to tell you." 

" ' We were both very idle,' said Mr. J. Barstow, • in those days 
— he idler than I apparently, for he often asked me to finish his 
papers for him, that he might have something to present to our 
common tutor. He lived very much alone, I think he was fonder 
of the saddle than the boats ; and T saw but little of him, but I 
liked and admired much what I saw.' " 

During the spring of this year he decided on the Church as his 
profession instead of the law. His name had been down at I Jn- 
coln's-inn, but circumstances and his own convictions altered his 
plan of life, a change which he never regretted for a moment. 

TO HIS MOTHER. 

Shelford, Cambridge, Jime 23, 1841. 

" I have been reading the Edinburgh Revietv (April, 1841), on 
No. 90 of the Tracts for the Times, and 1 wish I could transcribe 

every word, and send it to . Whether wilful or self-deceived, 

these men are Jesuits, taking the oath to the Articles with moral 
reservations which allow them to explain them away in senses 
utterly diflerent from those of their authors. All the worst doctri- 
nal features of Popery Mr. Newman professes to believe in." 

Dr. Bateson, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, his tutor 
much beloved, whose kindly reception of him when he returned 



52 Charles Kingsley. 

as Regius Professor of Modern History in i860, was a source of 
grateful joy to him, thus recalls the undergraduate, to whom his 
help was so important : 

St. John's, December, 1875. 

" Charles Kingsley came to Cambridge sufficiently well pre 
pared. He was almost immediately made a scholar of Magdalene, 
and he was prizeman at the college examination of freshmen in 
June, 1839. 

" I look back with much satisfaction, and shall always reflect 
with pride on my engagement to serve him in the capacity of clas- 
sical private tutor. He was my pupil for his three first terms, from 
October, i8'38, to Midsummer, 1839, and again from October, 
1840, to the end of the Long Vacation, 1841. Being appointed 
in the' Michaelmas term of that year an examiner for the classical 
tripos for the following year, for which he was to be a candidate, I 
was unable to continue my engagement for a longer time. 

" It is too true, as no one lamented more than himself, that 
from various causes he made but an indifferent use of the opportu- 
nities which his residence in Cambridge afforded him, at all events 
for the greater part of the time. In this respect he differs little 
from many of the men of poetic genius who have been under- 
graduates at our universities. Whether it is that our system of 
training and of frequent examinations, has something in it which 
is repulsive and uncongenial, or that their fervid and impulsive na- 
tures are unable to brook the restraint of our discipline, certain it 
is that many youths of most brilliant promise, who have lived to 
achieve great things in after years, have left our colleges with but 
little cause to congratulate themselves on time well spent or 
talents well employed. My own relations with Charles Kingsley 
in those early days were always agreeable, although I was unable 
to induce him to apply himself with any energy to his classical 
work, until quite the close of his undergraduate career. Then, 
indeed, he seemed an altered man. With wonderful ability and 
surprising quickness during the last few months he made rapid 
strides, and I can well remember admiring his papers, more espe- 
cially those of Latin prose and verse, which he sent up for the 
classical tripos. They exhibited excellence and power, due far 
more to native talent than to industry or study, and raised him to 
a place in the first class of the classical tripos. P'or after all his 
degree was a good one, as senior optime in mathematics, and a 
first class in classics ; but I must add that it was nothing compared 
to what might have been attained by a man of "his powers. If he 
had worked as an undergraduate with only a small portion of the 
industry and energy which he exhibited after he left Cambridge, 
there was no academic distinction that would not have been within 
his reach." 



Incident of the Examination. 53 

An incident occurred during the examination which was much 
talked of at the time, and is recalled by the Rev. Rigby Kew- 
ley, now Rector of Baldock, and Honorary Canon of Rochester : 

'■'■ On one morning but one question remained of a paper on 
mechanics, ' Describe a Common Pump.' Of the internal ma- 
chinery of a pump Kingsley was unable to render a scientific ac- 
count, but of the outside his vivid imagination suppUed a picture 
which his facile pencil soon transferred to paper. Under the head- 
ing, ' Describe a Pump,' he drew a grand village pump in the 
midst of a broad green, and opposite the porch of an ancient 
church. By the side of the pumj) stood, in all pomposity of his 
office, the village beadle, with uniform and baton. Around were 
women and children of all ages, shapes, dress, and sizes, each car- 
rying a crock, a jug, a bucket, or some vessel large or small. 
These were drawn with considerable power, and the whole was 
lighted up with his deep vein of humor ; while around the pump 
itself was a huge chain, padlocked, and surrounded by a notice, 
' This pump locked during Divine service.' This, Kingsley sent 
up to the examiner as his answer to the question. I know not 
whether he got any marks for it ; but it was so clever that the 
moderator of the year had it framed and hung up on the wall of 
his room." 

He left Cambridge in February, much exhausted in body and 
mind, from having, by six months' desperate reading, done work 
which should have been spread over his three years of University 
life. He came out in honors, first-class in classics, and senior opt. 
in mathematics. 



CHAPTER IV. , 

1842 — 1843. 
Aged 23-24. 

Reads for Holy Orders — Correspondence — Ordained Deacon — Settles at Eversley 
— Parish Work — Letters. 

During the spring, while slowly recovering the exhaustion of his 
degree and reading for Holy Orders, he had the offer of two cura- 
cies in Hampshire, at Kingsley and Eversley. He chose the 
latter. 

Chelsea, April, 1842. 

'' . . .1 hope to be ordained in July to the Curacy of Evers- 
ley in Hampshire. In the midst of lovely scenery — rich — but not 
exciting. And you will be with me in your thoughts, in my village 
visits, and my moorland walks, when I am drinking in from man, 
and nature, the good and the beautiful, while I purge in my voca- 
tion the evil, and raise up the falling and the faint. Can I not do 
it ? for have I not fainted and fallen ? And do I not know too 
well the bitterness that is from without, as well as the more dire 
one, from within .... My reading at present must be exclu- 
sively confined to divinity — not so yours. You may still range 
freely among the meadows of the beautiful, while I am mining in 
the deep mountains of the true. And so it should be through life. 
The wotnan's part should be to cultivate the affections and the 
imagination ; the man's the intellect of their common soul. She 
must teach him how to apply his knowledge to men's hearts. He 
must teach her how to arrange that knowledge into practical and 
theoretical forms. In this the woman has the nobler task. But 
there is one more noble still — to find out from the notices of 
the universe, and the revelation of God, and the uninspired truth 
which he has made his creatures to declare even in heathen lands, 
to find out from all these the pure, mind of God, and the eternal 
laws whereby He made us and governs us. This is true science ; 
and this, as we discover it, will replace phantoms by reality, and 
that darkling taper of ' common sense,' by the glorious light of cer- 



The Man and the Woman. 55 

tainty. For this the man must bring his philosophy, and the 
woman her exquisite sense of the beautiful and the just, and all 
hearts and all lands shall lie open before them, as they gradually 
know them one by one ! That glorious word know — it is God's 
attribute, and includes in itself all others. Love — truth — all are 
parts of that awful power of knowing, at a single glance, from and 
to all eternity, what a thing is in its essence, its properties, and its 
relations to the whole universe through all time ! I feel awe- 
struck whenever I see that word used rightly, and I never, if I can 
remember, use it myself of myself. But to us, as to dying Schiller, 
hereafter many things will become plain and clear. And this is no 
dream of romance. It is what many have approximated to before 
us, with less intellectual, and no greater spiritual advantages, and 
strange to say, some of them alone — buried in cloisters seldom — 
in studies often — some, worst of all, worn down by the hourly 
misery of a wife who neither loved them nor felt for them : but to 
those who, through love, have once caught a glimi)se of ' the great 
secret,' what may they not do by it xw years of love and thought .? 
For this heavenly knowledge is not, as boyish enthusiasts fancy, 
the work of a day or a year. Youth will pass before we shall have 
made anything but a slight approximation to it, and having handed 
down to our children the little wisdom we shall have amassed 
while here, we shall commend them to God, and enter eternity 
very little wiser in proportion to the universal knowledge than we 
were when we left it at our birth, 

" But still if our plans are not for time, but for eternity, our 
knowledge, and therefore our love to God, to each other, to our- 
selves, to everything, will progress for ever. 

" And this scheme is practical too — for the attainment of this 
heavenly wisdom requires neither ecstasy nor revelation, but prayer, 
and watchfulness, and observation, and deep and solemn thought. 
And two great rules for its attainment are simple enough^' Never 
forget what and where you are ; ' and, ' Grieve not the Holy Spirit.' 
And it is not only compatible with our duties as priests of the 
Eternal, but includes them as one of the means to its attainment, 
for 'if a man will do God's will, he shall know of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God.' They do not speak without scriptural as 
well as theoretical foundation, who think that we may hereafter be 
called upon to preach God to other worlds beside our own ; and 
if this be so, does not the acquirement of this knowledge become 
a duty ? Knowledge and love are reciprocal. He who loves 
knows. He who knows loves. Saint John is the example of the 
first. Saint Paul of the second." 



In the interval between Cambridge and his curacy he began to 
write the life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, his ideal saint, not 



56 Charles Kings ley. 

intending it for publication, but as a gift book to his wife on his 
marriage day, if that day should ever come. 

May, 1842. 

"When it is finished," he says, "I have another work of the 
same kind to begin — a life of St. Theresa — as a specimen of the 
dreamy mystic, in contrast with the working ascetic, St. Elizabeth, 
and to contrast the celibate saint with the married one. 

" For this we must read Tersteegen, Jacob Behmen, Madame 
Guyon, Alban Butler, Fenelon, some of Origen and Clemens Alex- 
andiinus, and Coleridge's ' Aids,' &c., also some of Kant, and a 
German history of mysticism. In order to understand puritanism 
and evangelicalism, we must thoroughly understand asceticism and 
mysticism, which have to be eradicated from them in preaching our 
'Message.'" 

y7^}te 8, 1842. 

" Amuse yourself — get poetry and read it — T have a book called 
'Tennyson's Poems,' the most beautiful poetry of the last fifteen 
years .... Shall I send it you ? . 

" Tell me if I am ever obscure in my expressions, and do not 
fancy that if I am obscure I am therefore deep. If I were really 
deep, all the world would imderstand, though they might not appre- 
ciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. 
Tell me then when I am obscure, for to me an obscurity is a rea- 
son for suspecting a fallacy .... Pray simply, ' O God lead 
us into all Truth, and make us like little children.' Do not repine 
when you feel no pleasure in the offices of religion, the change is 
in you, and not in God, and the fact of your being sensible of, and 
sorry for this change, shows that it is caused by no cessation of 
your love to God or his grace to you — but by physical weakness." 

Early in July he went to Farnham for his ordination. From 
whence he writes : — 

July 7, 1842. 

J " I have finished the first day's examination better than I ex- 
pected, and though 1 was so nervous at first that I could hardly 
stand, I recovered myself tolerably afterwards. . . ." 

" I shall hope to do tolerably to-morrow, and the greater part ot 
Saturday I shall give up to prayer and meditation, and fasting." 

Farnham, ytcly 10, 1842. 

". . . God's mercies are new every morning. Here I am 
waiting to be admitted in a few hours to His holy ministry, and 
take refuge for ever in His Temple ! . . . . Yet it is an awful 
thing ! for we promise, virtually at least, to renounce this day not 



Preparation for Ordination. 57 

only the devil and the flesh, but the world ; — to do nothing, know- 
nothing, which shall not tend to the furtherance of God's Kingdom, 
or the assimilation of ourselves to the Great Ideal, and to our 
proper place and rank in the great system whose harmony we are 
to labor to restore. And can we restore harmony to the Church, 
luiless we have restored it to ourselves ? If our own souls are dis- 
cords to the celestial key, the immutable symphonies which revela- 
tion gives us to hear, can we restore the concord of the perplexed 
vibrations round us ? . . . . We must be holy ! and to be holy 
we must believe rightly as well as pray earnestly. We must bring 
to the well of truth a spirit purified from all previous fancies, all 
medicines of our own which may adulterate the water of life ! We 
must take of that and not of our own, and show it to mankind. It 
is that glory in the beauty of truth, which was my idol, even when 
I did not practise or even know truth. But now that I know it, I 
can practise it, and carry it out into the details of life ; now I am 
happy ; now I am safe I . . . . 

" But back ! back to the thought that in a few hours my whole 
soul will be'waiting silently for the seals of admission to God's ser- 
vice, of which honor I dare hardly think myself worthy, while I 
dare not think that (jod would allow me to enter on them unwor- 
thily .... Night and morning, for months, my prayer has 
been : ' O God if I am not worthy ; if my sin in leading souls 
from Thee is still unpardoned ; if I am desiring to be a deacon not 
wholly for the sake of serving Thee ; if it be necessary to show me 
my weakness and the holiness of Thy office still more strongly, O 
God reject me ! ' and while I shuddered for your sake at the idea 
of a repulse, I prayed to be repulsed if it were necessary, and in- 
cluded that in the meaning of my petitioi:i ' Thy will be done.' 
After this what can I consider my acceptance but as a proof that I 
have not sinned too deeply for escape 1 as an earnest that God has 
heard my prayer and will bless my ministry, and enable me not 
only to raise myself, but to lift others with me ! Oh ! my soul, my 
body, my intellect, my very love, I dedicate you all to God I And 
not mine only . . . . to be an example and an instrument 
of holiness before the Lord for ever, to dwell in His courts, to 
purge His Temple, to feed His sheep, to carry the lambs and bear 
them to that foster-mother whose love never fails, whose eye never 
sleeps, the Bride of God, the Church of Christ ! .... I 
would have written when I knew of my success yesterday, but 
there was no town post. 

" Direct to me next at Eversley !...." 

And now Charles Kingsley settled down, at the age of twenty- 
three, in Eversley ; little thinking it would be his home for thirty- 
tluee years. 



58 Charles Kingsley. 

The parish of Eversley (Aper's lea) was mostly common land 
when he became curate, divided into three hamlets, each standing 
on its own Httle green, surrounded by the moorland, with young 
forests of self-sown fir trees cropping up in every direction. The 
population was very scattered — "heth croppers" from time imme- 
morial and poachers by instinct and heritage. It was on the 
borders of Old Windsor Forest, the boundaries of which reached 
the adjoining parish of Finchampstead ; and the old men could 
remember the time when many a royal deer used to stray into 
Eversley parish. Every man in those days could snare his hare, 
and catch a good dinner of fish in waters not then strictly pre- 
served ; and the old women would tell of the handsome muffs and 
tippets, made of pheasants' feathers, not bought with silver, which 
they wore in their young days. 

Eversley Manor, it is said, was granted to the monks of West- 
minster by a charter from Edward the Confessor. We know from 
the charter that there was then a church at Eversley. William the 
Conqueror renewed the grant of the manor. 

It appears still to have belonged' to the church of Westminster, 
in 1280 ; but it must ere long have passed from its possession, for 
Bishop Woodlock of Winchester, in- the early years of the four- 
teenth century, instituted a priest to Eversley, on the x^resentation 
of Nicholas Heigheman. The chancel of the church dates from 
about the time of Henry VII. 

The great peculiarity of the parish are the fir trees, of which 
there are three fine specimens on the rectory lawn. 

For the first six weeks of his curate life he lived in the rectory 
house, and the following letter contained a sketch of the lawn and 
glebe from the drawing-room windows and a plan of the room. 

Eversley Rectory, July 14, 1842. 

" Can you understand my sketch ? I am no drawer of trees, 
but the view is beautiful. The ground slopes upward from the 
windows to a sunk fence and road, without banks or hedges, and 
rises in the furze hill in the drawing, which hill is perfectly beauti- 
ful in light and shade, and color .... Behind the acacia on 
the lawn you get the first glimpse of the fir-forests and moors, of 
which five-sixths of my parish consist. Those deHcious self-sown 
firs ! Every step I wander they whisper to me of you, the delicious 
past melting into the more delicious futrre. ' What has been, shall 
be,' they say ! I went the other day to Bramshill Park, the home 



Daily Duties. 59 

of the seigneur du pays here, Sir John Cope. And there I saw the 
very tree where an ancestor of mine, Archbishop Abbot, in James 
the First's time, shot the keeper by accident ! I sat under the 
tree, and it all seemed to me like a present reality. I could fancy 
the noble old man, very different then from his picture as it hangs 
in the dining room at Chelsea. I could fancy the deer sweeping 
by, and the rattle of the cross-bow, and the white splinters spark- 
ling off the fated tree as the bolt glanced and turned — and then 
the death shriek, and the stagger, and the heavy fall of the sturdy 
forester — and the bow dropping from the old man's hands, and the 
blood sinking to his heart in one chilling rush, and his glorious 
features collapsing into that look of changeless and rigid sorrow, 
which haunted me in the portrait upon the wall in childhood. He 
never smiled again ! And that solemn form always spoke to me, 
though I did not then know what it meant. It is strange that this 
is almost the only portrait saved in the wreck of our family.* As 
I sat under the tree, there seemed to be a solemn and remorseful 
moan in the long branches, mixed with the airy whisper of the 
lighter leaves that told of present as well as past ! 

" J go to the school every day, and teach as long as I can stand 
the heat and smell. The few children are in a room ten feet 
square and seven feet high. I am going after dinner to read to an 
old woman of 87; so you sefe I have begun. This is a plan of 
my room. It is a large, low, front room, with a light paper and 
drab curtains, and a large bow window, where I sit, poor me, 
solitary in one corner." 

Before his coming, the church services had been utterly neg- 
lected. It sometimes happened that when the rector had a cold, 
or some trifling ailment, he would send the clerk to the church 
door at eleven, to inform the few who attended that there would be 
no service. In consequence the ale-houses were full on Sunday 
and the church empty, and it was up-hill work getting a congrega- 
tion together. 

July 17th was the young curate's first day of public ministration 
in Eversley Church, and he felt it deeply. 

* This picture of Archbishop Abbot, by Vandyke, came into the family 
through William Kingsley, born 1626, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to 
Charles II. son of William Kingsley, Archdeacon of Canterbury, and Damaris 
his wife, who was niece to Robertus Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury. The 
archbishop was a great friend of Lord Zouche, then owner of Bramshill Park, 
and while on a visit to him killed the keeper by accident with a bolt from his 
cross-bow aimed at a stag. He was suspended for a time, and, it is said, never 
smiled again. 



6o Charles Kings ley. 

. "I was not nervous," he says, ''for I had prayed before going 
into the desk that I might remember that I was not speaking on 
my own authority, but on God's, and the feeUng that the responsi- 
bihty (if I may so speak) was on God and not on me quieted the 
weak terror I have of offending people." 

EvERSLEY, Aug., 1842. 

" M)'- views of poverty are very strange. Had I been a Haroun 
Ah'aschid, with every sense 'lapped in Elysium,' I could have en- 
joyed all. Tlie man who cannot enjoy, cannot be healthy, and 
cannot be self-denying. But had I been a prairie hunter, cold and 
nakedness and toil would have been no evils to me. I could have 
enjoyed that which was given me, and never, I believe firmly, re- 
membered that there were greater sensual pleasures in life." 

" Never depreciate, according to the foolish way of sentimental- 
ists, the brotherly love of men Remember the sanc- 
tity attached to it in Scripture, and believe that in this, as in other 
things, the man is the stronger vessel. There is something awful ! 
spiritual, in men's love for each other ! It requires not even the 
presence of the beloved brother or- friend — it requires no expres- 
sion—it is too deep for emotion. It goes on its way like a mighty 
unconscious stream, that brother's love, and sacrifices itself often 
for a man with whom it never exchanges a word. I could tell you 
a thousand stories — I will some day — to prove the mysterious 
abysses of a man's heart — God's image ! Here is one. There 
were two Dover coachmen — twins. One drove the up coach the 
other the down for thirty years, so that they never saw each other 
night or day, but when they whirled past once a day, each on his 
box, on their restless homeless errand. They never noticed 
each other in passing but by the jerk of the wrist, which is the cant 
sign of recognition among horse-driving men. Brutes ! the senti- 
nientalist will say — for they were both fat, jolly men 1 And when 
one of them died, the other took to his bed in a few days, in per- 
fect health, and pined away and died also ! His words were ' Now 
Tom is gone, I can't stay.' Was not that spirit love? That story 
always makes me ready to cry. And cases as strong are common." 

EvERSLEY, 1842. 

" , . , The body the temple of the Living God 

There has always seemed to me something impious in the neglect 
of personal health, strength, and beaut)', which the religious and 
sometimes clergymen of this day affect. It is very often a mere 
form of lazini^-.s-and untidiness !....! should be ashamed 
of bein >• weak. I could not do half the little good I do do here, if 



Physical Exe7'cise. 6i 

it were not for that strength and activity wliich some consider 
coarse and degrading. Many clergymen would half kill themselves 
if they did what I do. And though they might walk about as 
much, they would neglect exercise of the arms and chest, and be- 
come dyspeptic or consumptive. Do not be afraid of my over- 
working myself If I stop, I go down. I must work 

How merciful God has been in turning all the strength and hardi- 
hood I gained in snipe shooting and hunting, and rowing and jack- 
fishing in those magnificent fens to His work ! While I was follow- 
ing my own fancies He was preparing me for His work. I could 
wish I were an Apollo for His sake ! Strange idea, yet it seems 
so harmonious to me ! ... Is it not an awful proof that mat- 
ter is not necessarily evil, that we shall be clothed in bodies even 
in our perfect state ? Think of that ! ... It seems all so 
harmonious to me. It is all so full of God, that I see no inconsis- 
tency in making my sermons while I am cutting wood, and no 
'bizarrerie' in talking one moment to one man about the points of 
a horse, and the next moment to another about the mercy of God to 
sinners. I try to catch men by their leading ideas, and so draw them 
off insensibly to my leading idea. And so I find — shall I tell you? 
you know it is not vanity, but the wish to make you happy in the 
thought that God is really permitting me to do His work — I find 
that dissent is decreasing ; people are coming to church who never 
went anywhere before ; that I am loved and respected — or rather 
that God's ministry, which has been here deservedly despised, alas! 
is beginning to be respected ; and above all, that the young wild 
fellows who are considered as hopeless by most men, because most 
men are what they call 'spoony Methodists,' i. e., effeminate ascet- 
ics, dare not gainsay, but rather look up to a man who they see 
is their superior, if he chose to exert his power in physical as well 
as intellectual skill. 

"So I am trying to become (harmoniously and consistently) all 
things to all men, and I thank God for the versatile mind He has 
given me. But I am becoming egotistical." 

This was one secret of his influence in Eversley : he could swing 
a flail with the threshers in the barn, turn his swathe with the mow- 
ITS in the meadow, pitch hay with the hay-makers in the pasture, 
irom knowing every fox earth on the moor, the " reedy hover" of 
the pike, the still hole where the chub lay, he had always a word 
in sympathy for the huntsman or the old poacher. With the far- 
mer he discussed the rotation of crops, and with the laborer the 
science of hedging and ditching. And yet while he seemed to ask 
for information, he unconsciously gave more th^ ,ived. 

At this time Mr. Maurice's "Kingd^- ' •lUst" wa? put into 



62 Charles Kings ley. 

his hands. It was in a great crisis of his life, and he always said 
that he owed more to that book than to any he had ever read, for 
by it his views were cleared and his faith estabUshed. 

It may seem strange to some that Carlyle's works should have 
laid the foundation to which Coleridge's *' Aids " and Maurice's 
works were the superstructure : but so it was. The friend who 
gave them all to him little thought that Chevalier Bunsen, in his 
"Hyppolytus" at a later period would strike the point of contact 
between these three authors which explains their effect on Charles 
Kingsley's mind. 

Circumstances now caused a long break in this correspondence, 
but the faith and patience with which the trial was met may be 
seen in these parting words, or perhaps still more in some rules, 
intended for one eye only, but from which extracts have been 
made, in the hope they may help others who have the same thorny 
road to travel, without such a friend and guide. 

EVERSLEY, August, 1842. 

" . . . Though there may be clouds between us now, yet 
they are safe and dry, free from storm and rains — our parted state 
now is quiet grey weather, under which all tender things will spring 
up and grow, beneath the warm damp air, till they are ready for 
the next burst of sunshine to hurry them into blossom and fruit. 
Let us plant and rear all tender thoughts, knowing surely that 
those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. ... I can under- 
stand people's losing by trusting too little to God, but I cannot un- 
derstand any one's losing by trusting too much to Him ! . . . ." 

" There are two ways of looking at every occurrence — a bright 
and a dark side. Two modes of action — Which is most wordiy of 
a rational being, a Christian and a friend ? It is absurd, as a 
rational being, to torture one's self unnecessarily. It is inconsis- 
tent in a Christian to see God's wrath, rather than His mercy in 
everything. . . . , How to avoid this morbidity of mind — 
by prayer. ' Resist the devil and he will flee from you.' By turn- 
ing your mind from the dark view. Never begin to look darkly at 
a subject, without checking yourself and saying, ' Is there not a 
bright side to this ? Has not God promised the bright side to me ? 
Is not my happiness in my own power ? Do I not know that I am 
ruining my mind and endangering the happiness of those dear to 
me — by looking at the wrong side ? ' Make this your habit. 
Every gift of God is good, and given for our happiness ; and we 
sin if we abuse it. To use our fancy to our own misery is to abuse 
it and to sin — the realm of the possible was given to man to hope, 



Parting Words, 6^, 

and not to fear in If (in sorrow) the thought strikes 

you tliat we are punished for our sins — mourn for them, and not for 
the happiness which they have prevented. Rather thank God that 
He has stopped us in time, and remember His promises of restor- 
ing us if we profit by his chastisement. 

"In cases of love to God and working to His glory in the first 
and second intention read Taylor's ' Holy Living.' But eschew 
his Popish fallacy about duties as different from perfections. Every 
step in love and to God, and devotion to Him is a duty! That 
doctrine was invented to allow mankind to exist, while a few self- 
conceited shut themselves up in a state of unnatural celibacy and 
morbid excitement, in order to avoid their duty, instead of doing 
it. Avoid the Fathers, after Origen (including him), on this ac- 
count — their theories are not universal .... 

"... We may think too much ! There is such a thing as 
mystifying one's self! Mystifying one's self is thinking a dozen 
thoughts in order to get to a conclusion, to which one might arrive 
by thinking one ; getting at ideas by an unnecessarily subtle and 
circuitous path : then, because one has been through many steps, 
one fancies one has gone deep. This is one form of want of sim- 
plicity. This is not being like a little child, any more than analys- 
ing one's own feelings. A child goes straight to its point, and it 
hardly knows why. When you have done a thing, leave it alone. 
You mystify yourself after the idea, not before. Second thoughts 
may be best before action — they are folly after action, unless we 
find we have sinned. The consistent Christian should have no 
second thoughts, but do good by the first impulse. How few at- 
tain to this. I do not object to subtlety of thought : but it is dan- 
gerous for one who has no scientific guide of logic, &c. 

"Aim at depth. A thought is deep in proportion as it is near 
God. You may be subtle, and only perceive a trifling property of 
the subject, which others do not. To be deep, you must see the 
subject in its relation to God — yourself — and the universe; and 
the more harmonious and simple it seems, the nearer God and the 
deeper it is. All the deep things of God are bright — for God is 
light. The religion of terror is the most superficial of all religions. 
God's arbitrary will, and almighty power, may seem dark by them- 
selves, though deep, as they do to the Calvinists ; but that is 
because they do not involve His moral character. Join them with 
the fact tliat He is a God of mercy as well as justice; remember 
that His essence is love ; — and the thunder-cloud will blaze with 
dewy gold, full of soft rain, and pure light ! 

" Again : remember that habit, more than reason, will cure one 
both of mystifying subtlety and morbid fear ; and remember that 
habits are a series of individual voluntary actions, continued till 
they become involuntary. One would not wish to become good 
by habit, as the Aristotle-loving Tractarians do; but one must ac- 



64 Charles Kings ley. 

quire tones of inind by habit, in cases in w-hich intellectual, not 
iiioral obliquity, or constitutional ill-health is the cause of failure. 

"Some minds are too 'subjective.' What I mean is, that they 
may devote themselves too much to the subject of self and man- 
kind. Now man is not 'the noblest study of man.' (What lies 
the trashy poets of Pope and Johnson's age tell, which are taken 
as gospel, and acted upon, because the idol said so !) God is the 
noblest study of man. He is the only study fit for a woman de- 
voted to Him. And Him you can study in three ways. 

" I St. From His dealings in History. This is the real Philosophy 
of History. Read Arnold's ' Lectures on Modern History.' (Oh ! 
why did that noblest of men die ? God have mercy upon England ! 
He takes the shining lights from us, for our National sins !) And 
read as he tells us to read, not to study man a la Rochefoucauld, 
but God a la David ! 

" 2nd. From His image as developed in Christ the ideal, and in all 
good men — great good men — David, Moses, St. Paul, Hooker, the 
four Oxford martyrs, Luther, Taylor, Howard. Read about that 
glorious Luther ! and like him strive all your life to free men from 
the bondage of custom and self, the two great elements of the 
world that lieth in wickedness ! Read Maurice for this purpose, 
and Carlyle. 

"3rd, From His works. Study nature — not scientifically — that 
would take eternity, to do it so as to reap much moral good from 
it. Superficial physical science is the devil's spade, with which he 
loosens the roots of the trees prepared for the burning ! Do not 
study matter for its own sake, but as the countenance of God ! 
Try to extract every line of beauty, every association, every moral 
reflection, every inexpressible feeling from it. Study the forms 
and colors of leaves and flowers, and the growth and habits of 
plants ; not to classify them, but to admire them and adore God. 
Study the sky ! Study water ! Study trees ! Study the sounds 
and scents of nature ! Study all these, as beautiful in themselves, ■ 
in order to re-combine the elements of beauty ; next, as allegories 
and examples from whence moral reflections maybe drawn ; next, 
as types of certain tones of feeling, &c, ; but remain (yourself) in 
God-dependence, superior to them. Learn what feelings they ex- 
press, but do not let thern mould the tone of your mind ; else by 
allowing a melancholy day to make you melancholy, you worship 
the creature more than the Creator. No sight but has some beauty 
and harmony ! 

"Read geology — Buckland's ' Bridgewater Treatise' and you 
will rise up awe-stru.ck and cling to God ! 

" Study the human figure, both as intrinsically beautiful and as 
expressing mind. It only expresses the broad natural childish 
emotions, which are just what you want to return to. Study ' natural 
language' — I mean the 'language of attitude.' It is an inexhaust- 



Parting Words. 65 

ible source of knowledge and delight, and enables one human being 
to understand another so perfectly. Draw,— -learn to draw and 
-paint figures. No one with such freedom of touch in landscape 
and perception of physical beauty requires anything but a few sim- 
ple rules, and some common attention to attitudes, to draw ex- 
quisitely. If you can command your hand in drawing a tree, you 
can in drawing a face. Perfect your coloring .... It will keep 
your mind employed on objective studies, and save you from morbid 
introversion of mind — brooding over fallen man. It will increase 
your perception of beauty, and thereby your own harmony of soul 
and love to God ! 

" Practise music — I am going to learn myself, merely to be able 
to look after my singers .... Music is such a vent for the 
feelings. .... 

"Study medicine .... I am stud3ang it .... Make 
yourself thoroughly acquainted with the wages, wants, and habits, 
and prevalent diseases of the poor, wherever you go. _ 

"Let your mind freely forth. Only turn it inwards at prayer 
time, to recollect sins of wsliich you were conscious at the time, 
not to look for fresh ones. They are provided against by prayer 
for pardon of unintentional sins. What wisdom in our Church ! 
She knew that if she allowed sin hunting, people would fancy, like 
some Dissenters, that pretending everything they had done was sui- 
ful, was a sign of holiness ! 

"Let your studies, then, be objective entirely. Look forward 
to the future with hope. Build castles, if you will, but only bright 
ones, and not too many — better to live in- the Past. We cannot 
help thanking God for that ! Blessed Past ! Has not God led us 
like sheep through the desert ? Think of all He has done for us. 

. . . . Be happy Weep, but let them be tears of 

tliankfulness. 

"Do not be too solicitous to find deep meanings in men's 
words. Most men do, and all men ought to mean only what is 
evident at first sight on their books (unless they be inspired or 
write for a private eye). This is the great danger of such men as 
Novalis, that you never know how much he means. Beware of 
subtlety again. The quantity of sounding nonsense in the world 
is incredible ! If you wish to be like a little child, study what a 
little child could understand — nature ; and do what a little child 
could do — love. 

" Use your senses much, and your mind little. Feed on Nature, 
and do not try to understand it. It will digest itself. It did so 
when you were a baby the first time ! Look round you much. 
Think little and read less ! Never give way to reveries. Have 

always some employment in your hands When you 

are doing nothing at night, pray and praise ! 

" See how much a day can do ! I have since nine this morning, 
S 



66 Charles Kingsley. 

cut wood for an hour ; spent an hour and more in prayer and 
humiliation, and thereby estabhshed a chastened but happy tone, 
which lasts till now; written six or seven pages of a difficult part 
of my essay ; taught in the school ; thought over many things 
while walking ; gone round two-thirds of the parish visiting and 
doctoring ; and written all this. Such days are lives — and happy 
ones. One has no time to be miserable, and one is ashamed to 
invent little sorrows for one's self while one is trying to relieve 
such grief in others as would kill us, if we gave way or fancied 
about them ! 

" Pray over every truth, for though the renewed heart is not 
' desperately wicked,' it is quite ' deceitful ' enough to become so, 
if God be forgotten a moment ! . . . 

"Keep a common-place book, and put into it, not only facts 
and thoughts, but observations on form, and color, and nature, 
and little sketches, even to the form of beautiful leaves. They 
will all have their charm, all do their work in consolidating your 
ideas. Put everything into it. . . . Strive to put every idea 
into a tangible form, and write it down* Distrust every idea which 
you cannot put into words ; or rather distrust your own conception 
of it. Not so with feelings. Therefore write much. Try to put 
everything in its place in the great system . . . seeing the 
realities of Heaven and Earth." 



CHAPTER V. 

1842 — 1843. 
Aged 23-24. 

Curate Life— Letter from Colonel W.— Brighter Prospects— Correspondence 
Renewed — Promise of Preferment — Leaves Eversley. 

A YEAR passed by of silence and self-discipline, hard reading and 
parish duties. That sorrow was doing its work, his own words to 
his parents will testify. 

". . . Christianity heightens as well as deepens the human as 
well as the divine affections. 1 am happy, for the less hope, the more 

faith God knows what is best for us, and very lucky 

that He does, for I am sure we do not. Continual resignation, at 
last I begin to find, is the secret of continual strength. ' Daily 
dying,' as Behmen interprets it, is the path of daily living. . . ." 

His mother now paid him a visit, and she gives this account of 
his surroundings : — 

Eversley, 1842. 

" Here I am, in a humble cottage in the corner of a sunny 
green, a little garden, whose flower-beds are surrounded with tall 
and aged box, is fenced in from the path with a low white paling. 
The green is gay with dogs, and i)igs, and geese, some running 
frolic races, and others swimn'iing in triumph in a glassy pond, where 
they are safe from all intruders. Every object around is either 
picturesque or happy, fulhlling in their different natures the end of 

their creation Surely it must have been the especial 

providence of God that directed us to this place ! and the thought 
of this brightens every trial. There is independence in every good 
sense of the word, and yet no loneliness. The family at the Brewery 
are devoted to Charles, and think they cannot do enough for him. 
The dear old man says he has been praying for years for such a 
time to come, and that Eversley has not been so blessed for sixty 
years. Need I say rejoice with me. Here I sit surrounded by 
your books and little things which speak of you." 

To his college friend, Peter A. L. H. Wood, ^.sq. (now Rector 
of Copford, Essex), he writes to beg for a visit in his solitude. 



6S Charles Kings ley, 

*' Peter! Eversley, Augnst 5, 1842. 

" Whether m the glaring saloons of Almack's, or making love 
in the equestrian stateliness of the j3ark, or the luxurious recum- 
bency of the ottoman, whether breakfasting at one, or going to bed 
at three, thou art still Peter, the beloved of my youth, the staff of 
my academic days, the regret of my parochial retirement ! — Peter ! 
I am alone ! Around me are the everlasting hills, and the ever- 
lasting bores of the country ! My parish is peculiar for nothing 
but want of houses and abundance of peat bogs ; my parishioners 
remarkable only for aversion to education, and a predilection for 
fat bacon. I am wasting m)'- sweetness on the desert air — I say my 
sweetness, for I have given up smoking, and smell no more. Oh, 
Peter, Peter, come down and see me ! Oh that I could behold 
your head towering above the fir-trees that surround my lonely 
dwelling. Take pity on me ! I am ' like a kitten in the washhouse 
copper with the lid on-! ' And, Peter, prevail on some of your friends 
here to give me a day's trout-fishing, for my hand is getting out of 
practice. But, Peter, I am, considering the oscillations and perplex 
circumgurgitations of this piece-meal world, an improved man. I 
am much more happy, much more comfortable, reading, thinking, 
and doing my duty — much more than ever I did before in my life. 
Therefore I am not discontented with my situation, or regretful 
that I buried my first-class in a country curacy, like the girl who 
shut herself up in a band-box on her wedding night {I'ide Rogers's 
'Italy.') And my lamentations are not general (for I do not want 
an inundation of the froth and tide-wash of Babylon the Great), but 
particular, being solely excited by want of thee, oh Peter, who art 
very pleasant to me, and wouldst be more so if thou wouldst 
come and eat my mutton, and drink my wine, and admire my 
sermons, some Sunday at Eversley. 

" Your faithful friend, 

" Boanerges Roar-at-the-Clods." 

His friend responded to the call. " I paid him a visit," he says, 
'' at Eversley, where he lived in a thatched cottage. So roughly was 
he lodged that I recollect taking him some game, which was dried 
to a cinder in the cooking and quite spoiled ; but he was as happy 
as if he were in a palace. . . ." 

And now the young curate, who had gained the love and respect 
of the parish, was rewarded by brigher prospects. He had little 
society, during his first year of curate life, except in the parish and 
at Sandhurst, where he had one or two friends in the Senior de- 
partment of the Military College. One of these friends thus de- 
scribes their intercourse at this time :-- 



Brighter Days, 69 

FROM COLONEL W. 

*' My memory often runs back to the days at Sandhurst, wher. I 
used to meet dear Kingsley continually in his little curate ror Is, 
at the corner of the Green at Eversley ; when he told me of jis 
attachment to one whom he feared he should never be able to 
marry, and that he supposed that he should live the rest of his life 
reading old books, and knocking his head against the ceiling of his 
room, like a caged bird. And well I remember a particular Sun- 
day, when walking with him to his church in the afternoon, having 
dined with him at mid-day. It was a lovely afternoon in the au- 
tumn — passing through the corn in sheaf, the bells ringing, and 
people, young and old, gathering together near the church. He, 
looking down on the Rectory house, said to me 

" ' Oh ! how hard it is to go through life without wishing for the 
goods of others ! Look at the Rectory ! Oh, if I were there with 
a wife, how happy,' &c. God seemed to hear the desire of his 
creature, for when the next year's corn was in sheaf, you were with 
him at the Rectory. And he has told me in after years that his life 
with you was one of constantly increasing love. I called at his 
cottage one morning, and 1 found him almost beside himself, stamp- 
ing his things into a portmanteau. ' What is the matter, dear 
Kingsley ?' — ' 1 am engaged. 1 am going to see her now — to-day.^ 
1 was so glad, and left him to his joy. 

'" My tears will come to my eyes in writing these lines, for I 
loved Kingsley as well as man can love man. I have only one lit- 
tle scratch of a drawing of his. I have many pleasant reminiscen- 
ces, sparks of his large mind, as in friendly chat we would sit and 
draw together, or walk by river side and think of Nature, — and ail 
one's strongest desires, — for a heart to share every thought and 
sight. And now this picture in life is over " 

In September, 1843, through the kindness of Lord Sidne)'' Os- 
borne, a relation of his future wife. Lord Portman promised to give 
Charles Kingsley one of the first small livings that fell to his gift, 
and in the mean time advised him to apply for the curacy of Pim- 
perne, near Blandford, which with a good house would be vacant 
in the following spring. This being secured, Bishop Sumner gave 
permission for his resigning the curacy of Eversley at Christmas. 

The correspondence, which had dropped for a year, was now 

resumed. 

Eversley Cross, October, 1843. 

" I am getting very strong, and have been threshing wheat a 
good deal these last two wet days, which is splendid exercise. I 
look forward to working in" the garden at Pimperne. What a place 
for summer nights ! We will go and ^t in the church sometimes 



. yo Charles Kings ley. 

on summer nights, too .... but I am not fond, you know, 
of going into churches to pray. We must go up into the chase in 
the evenings, and pray there with nothing but God's cloud temple 
between us and His heaven ! And His choir of small birds and 
night crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who 
praise Him all night long ! And in the still summer noon, too, 
with the lazy-paced clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and 
the bee humming in the beds of thyme, and one bird making the 
hollies ring a moment, and then all still — hushed — awe-bound, as 
the great thunderclouds slide up from the far south ! Then, there 
to praise God ! Ay, even when the heaven is black with wind, the 
thunder crackling over our heads, then to join in the p^an of the 
storm-spirits to Him whose pageant of power passes over the earth 
and harms us not in its mercy ! 

" 1 once scandalized a man who had been sentimentalising about 
Gothic aisles, by telling him that all agreed that they were built in 
imitation of the glades of forest trees, with branches interlacing 
overhead ! and that I liked God's work better than man's ! Jn the 
Cathedral, we worship alone and the place is dumb, or speaks only 
to us, raising a semi-selfish emotion ; that is, having its beginning 
and end in us. In the forest, every branch and leaf, with the thou- 
sand living things which cluster on them, all worship with us ! " 

EvERSLEY, November, 1843. 

" , . . As to self-improvement, the true Catholic mode of 
learning is, to ' prove all things,' as far as we can without sin or 
the danger of it, and 'hold fast that which is good.' Let us never 
be afraid of trying anything, though copied from people of different 
opinions to our own. And let us never, never be afraid of changing 
our opinions — not our knowledge. If we should find fasting unsuc- 
cessful, we will simply give it up — and so on with all practices and 
opinions not -expressed in Scripture. That is a form of pride 
which haunts the more powerful minds, the unwillingness to go 
back from one's declared opinion, but it is not found in great child- 
like geniuses. Fools may hold fast to their scanty stock through 
life, and we must be very cautious in drawing them from it— for 
where can they supply its place ? Therefore, there is no more 
unloving, heartless man-murderer, than the man who goes about 
trying, for the display of his own ' talents ' (a word I dislike), to 
shake people in their belief, even when that belief is not quite 
sound. Better believe in ghosts 'with no heads and jackboots 
on,' like my Eversley people, than believe in nothing but self ! 
Therefore Maurice's loving, Christian rule is, 'Never take away 
from a man even the shadow of a spiritual truth, unless you can 
give him substance in return.' Therefore, let those less educated 
or less holy minds, who have found some truth, hold it in peace — 



Wandering Minstrels. Ji 

not tear up all their belief along with their prejudices, tares and 
wheat together, as the Tractarians are doing to the poor of England 
now ! But those who discover much truth — ay, who make perhaps 
only one truth really their own, a living integral law of their spirits 
— must, in developing it, pass through many changes of opinion. 
They must rise and fall back, and rise higher again, and fall and 
rise again, till they reach the level table-land of truth, and can look 
down on men toiling and stumbling in the misty valleys, where the 
rising sunlight has not yet found its way. Or perhaps, their own 
minds will oscillate, like a pendulum, between Dualism and Uni- 
tarianism, or High Church and Low Church, until the oscillations 
become gradually smaller, and subside into the Rest of Truth ! — 
the peace which passes understanding I 1 fancy it is a law, that 
the greater the mind, the stronger the heart, the larger will the 
oscillations be, but the less they will be visible to the world, be- 
cause the wise man will not act outwardly upon his opinions until 
they ha.ve become knowledge, and his mind is in a state of rest. 
This 1 think the true, the only doctrine of Reserve — reserve of our 
own fancies, not of immutable truth. 

". .. . People smile at the 'enthusiasm of youth' — that 
enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a 
sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they 
ever lost it. Is it not strange, that the only persons who appear 
to me to carry to the grave with them the joyousness, simplicity, 
and lovingness and trust of children, are the most exalted Chris- 
tians ? Thmk of St. John, carried into the Church at Smyrna, at 
the age of ninety-nine, and with his dying breath repeating the 
same simple words, ' Little children, love one another.' " 

EVERSLEY, October 27. 

" . . . I have been making a fool of myself for the last ten 
minutes, according to the world's notion of folly, for there have 
been some strolling fiddlers under the window, and I have been 
listening and crying like a child. Some quick music is so inex- 
pressibly mournful. It seems just like one's own feelings — exulta- 
tion and action, Avith the remembrance of past sorrow wailing uj), 
yet without bitterness, tender ii^ its shrillness, through the mingled 
.tide of present joy ; and the notes seem thoughts — thoughts pure 
of words, and a spirit seems to call to me in them and cry, ' Hast 
thou not felt all this ?' And I start when I find myself answering 
unconsciously, ' Yes, yes, I know it all ! ' Surely we are a part of 
all we see and hear ! ' And then the harmony thickens, and all 
distinct sound is pressed together and absorbed in a confused 
paroxysm of delight, where still the female treble and the male 
base are distinct for a moment, and then one again — absorbed 
into each other's being — sweetened and strengthened by each 



72 Charles Kingsley. 

other's melody .... why should I not cry? Those men 
have unconsciously told me my own tale ! why should 1 not love 
them and pray for them ? Are they not my benefactors ? Have 
they not given me more than food and dtink ? Let us never de- 
spise the wandering minstrel. He is an unconscious witness for 
God's harmony — a preacher of the world-music — the power of 
sweet sounds, which is a link between every age and race — the 
language which all can understand, though few can speak. And 
who knows what tender thoughts his own sweet music stirs within 
him, though he eat in pot-houses, and sleep in barns ! Ay, 
thoughts too deep, for words are in those simple notes — why 
should not we feel them ?...." 

EvERSLEY, October, 1843. 

" . . . I have been thinking of how we are to order our estab- 
lishment at Pimperne. The best way will be, while we are in Somer- 
setshire (a season of solemn and delightful preparation for our work) 
we will hunt out all the texts in the Bible about masters and ser- 
vants, to form rules upon them ; and our rules we will alter and 
improve upon in time, as we find out more and more of the true 
relation in which we ought to stand to those whom God has placed 

under us 1 feel more and more that the new principle 

of considering a servant as a trader, who sells you a certain amount 
of work for a certain sum of money, is a devil's principle, and that 
we must have none of it, but return as far as we can to the patri- 
archial and feudal spirit towards them * 

"... And religion, that is, truth, shall be the only thing in our 
house. All things must be made to tend to it; and if they cannot 
be made to tend to God's glory, the belief in, and knowledge of the 
spiritual world, and the duties and ties of humanity, they must be 
turned out of doors as part of 'the world.' One thing we must 
keep up, if we intend to be anything like witnesses for God, in 
l)erhaps the most sensual generation since Alaric destroyed Rome, 
— I mean the continual open verbal reference of everything, even 
to the breaking of a plate, f?f God and God's providence, as the 
Easterns do. The reason why God's name is so seldom in people's 
mouths is not that they reverence Him, as they say, too much to 
talk of Him (! ! !), but because they do not think of him ! 

" About our Parish. Islo clergyman knows less about the working 
of a parish than I do ; but one thing I do know, that I have to 
preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and to be instant in that, in 

season and out of season and at all risks And therefore 

1 pray daily for the Spirit of love to guide us, and the Spirit of 

* He carried out this principle in daily life, and at his death all the servants 
in his house had lived with him from seventeen to twenty-six years, and most 
of those who had left the rectory, left to go to a home of their own. 



Order in daily Work. j^ 

earnestness to keep us at work. For our work must be done by 
praying for our people, by preaching to them, in church and out of 
church (for all instruction is i^reaching — 7iide Hooker — by leading 
them to pray and worship in the liturgy, and by setting them an ex- 
ample ; — an example in every look, word, and motion, — in the pay- 
ing of a bill, the hirmg of a servant, the reproving of a child. 

" We will have no innovations in ceremony. Kut we will not let 
public Avorship become ' dead bones.' We will strive and pray, day 
and night, till we put life into it, till our parish feels that God is the 
great Idea, and that all things are in Him, and He in all things. 
The local means, to which so much importance is attached now-a- 
days, by those very sects who pretend to despise outward instru- 
ments, I mean the schools, charities, &c., I know nothing of, in 
Pimperne. But we must attend to them (not alter them), and make 
them tools for our work, which is to teach men that there is a God, 
and that nothing done without Hint is done at all, but a mere sham 
and makeshift. We must attend the schools and superintend the 
teaching, going round to the different classes, and not hearing them 
the letter, but trying by a few seasonable words to awaken them to the 
spirit ; this is the distinction which is so neglected between the duty 
of the parson and his wife, and that of the schoolmaster and mis- 
tress The Church Catechism must be the main point of 

instruction. Of the Bible, the Proverbs and the Gospels, with parts 
picked from the leading points of Old Testament history, are all 
they need know. They will soon learn the rest, if they can master 
the real meaning and spirit of Solomon and St. John. Few have 
done that, and therefore the Bible is a sealed book to the very people 
who swear by it, i. e., by some twenty texts in it which lay down 
their favorite doctrines plainly enough to be patched into a system, 
and those not understood skin deep. Tet us observe the Ember 
days, . . praying over the sins of the clergy, one's own especial- 
ly. .. . entreating God's mercy on the country, as children of 
a land fast hurrying to ruin in her mad love of intellectuality, mam- 
monism,' and false liberty ! and to avert some portion of the coming 
evil from Church and nation, . . ; . 1 see the dawn of better 
knowledge. Piiseyism is a struggle after it. It has failed — already 
failed, because unsound ; but the answer which it found in ten 
thousand hearts shows that men are yearning for better things than 
money, or dogmas, and that God's Spirit has not left us. Maurice 
is a struggle after it — Thomas Carlyle is a struggle — This book of 
Bosanquet's (' The Perils of the Nation ') is a struggle — All more or 
less sound, towards true Christianity, and therefore true national 
prosperity. But will they hear the voices which warn them ? , . . . 

" But now I must bid good- night, and read my psalms and lessons 
and pray " 



CHAPTER VI. 

1844 — 1847. 
Aged 25-28. 

Marriage — Curacy of Pimperne — Rectory of Eversley — Correspondence. 

Early in 1844 Charles Kingsley was married to Fanny, daughter 
of Pascoe Grenfell and Georgiana St. Leger his wife. He had 
settled to take possession of the curacy of Pimperne, in Dorset- 
shire, in the following spring, but the living of Eversley falling 
vacant at that time, a strong etfort was made by the parishioners 
to get the curate who had worked among them so indefatigably 
appointed rector. While the matter was pending, he went down 
into Dorsetshire for a few weeks alone to do the duty, staying 
either at Durweston Rectory or at Blandford, during which inter- 
val the following letters were written : — 

Salisbury, March 31, 1844. 

". . . I spent a delightful day yesterday. Conceive my 
pleasure at finding myself in Bemerton, George Herbert's parish, 
and seeing his house and church, and fishing in the very meadows 
where he, and Dr. Donne, and Izaak Walton, may have fished be- 
fore me. I killed several trout and a brace of grayUng, about 
three-quarters of a pound each — a fish quite new to me, smelling 
just like cucT-unbers. The dazzling chalk-wolds sleeping in the 
sun, the clear river rushing and boiling down in one ever-sliding 
sheet of transparent silver, the birds bursting into song, and mating 
and toying in every hedge-row — everything stirred with the gleam 
of God's eyes, when ' He reneweth the face of the earth ! ' I had 
many happy thoughts ; but I am very lonely. No time for more, 
as 1 am going to prayers in the cathedral." 

^ Durweston Rectory, April 1, 1844. . 

"I looked into and read much of ' Henry Martyn's Life' (East 
Indian missionary) last night. My mind is in a chaos about him. 
Sometimes one feels inclined to take him at his own word, and 
believe liim, as he says, a mere hypochondriac : then the next 



Carlyle and Wordsworth. 75 

moment he seems a saint. I cannot fathom it. Of this I am cer- 
tain, that he is a much better man than I am." 

Blandford, Ap-il 17, 1844. 

". . . More and more I find that these* writings of Carlyle's 
do not lead to gloomy discontent — that theirs is not a dark but a 
bright view of life : in reality, more evil speaking against the age 
and its inhabitants is thundered from the pulpit daily, by both 
Evangelical and Tractarian, than Carlyle has been guilty of in all 
his works ; but he finds fault in tangible original language — they 
speak evil of every one except their own party, but in such con- 
ventional language that no ear is shocked by the oft-repeated for- 
mulse of ' original sin ' and 'unconverted hearts,' and so on; and 
the man who would be furious if Carlyle had classed him among 
the ' valets,^ bears with perfect equanimity the information of Mr. 
B * * *, that he is a ' vessel of wrath,' or of Dr. P* * *, that he has 
put himself beyond the pale of Christ's atonement by sin after 
baptism. Let us in all things take Dr. Johnson's golden rule : 
' First clear your mind of cant." 

PiMPERNE, ^/r^'/ai, 1844. 

"I have been reading Wordsworth's 'Excursion,' with many 
tears and prayers too. To me he is not only poet, but preacher 
and prophet of God's new and divine philosophy- — a man raised as 
a light in a dark time, and rewarded by an honored age, for the 
simple faith in man and God with which he delivered liis message ; 
whose real nobility is independent of rank, or conventionahties of 
language or manner, which is but the fashion of this world and 
passes away. I am trying, in my way, to do good ; but what is 
the use of talking to hungry paupers about heaven ? ' Sir,' as my 
clerk said to me yesterday, ' there is a weight upon their hearts, 
and they care for no hope and no change, for they know they can 
be no worse off than they are.' And so they have no spirit to 
arise and go to their Father ! Those who lounge upon down beds, 
and throw away thousands at Crockford's and Almack's — they, the 
refined of this eai'th, have crushed it out of them. I have been 
very sad lately seeing this, and seeing, too, the horrid eftects of 
that new Poor Law. You must be behind the scenes to see the 

truth, in places which the Malthus's and 'sknow nothing 

of." .... 

" S. G. O. is deep in statistics and abuses. Heaven knows, 
when there are so many abuses, we ought to thank a man wlio H'ill 
hunt them out. I will never believe that a man has a real love for 
the good and beautiful, except he attacks the evil and the disgusting 
the moment he sees it ! Therefore you must make up your mind 

* "The Miscellanies," and "Past and Present." 



76 Charles Kingsley. 

to see nie, with God's help, a hunter out of abuses till the abuses 
cease — only till then. It is very easy to turn our eyes away from 
ugly sights, and so consider ourselves refined. The refined man to 
me is he who cannot rest in peace with a coal-mine, or a factory, or 
a Dorsetshire peasant's house near him, in the state in which they 
are I am deep in 'The Perils of the Nation.' . . . ." 

Sunday Night. 

" You know, I suppose, all that I can tell you. I am to see Sir 
John Cope at Arthur's Club House, to-morrow afternoon, and, at 
all events, shall return to you Monday, perhaps Rector of Evers- 
ley ! Forgive this short letter, as I am worn out ; but a bright 
future opens. Blessed be God. . . ." 

MONDAV. 

" All is settled at last. Sir John has given me the living, and is 
going to see the Bishop to-day, and I am to go down to Eversley 
to-morrow. He wishes me to settle there as soon as possible. 
God never fails those who put their trust in him " 

" . . . The presentation is to be ready in a few days. I am 
then to be instituted here in town, and then, please God, we shall 
get to Eversley on Friday or Saturday. The packing, van, &c., 
and some little comforts before we take possession, I have settled. 
Congratulations, as you may suppose, are plentiful .... 
and I had the pleasure of bringing the news myself to Eversley. 
. . . . I go to the Bishop of Winchester to-morrow. I 
took the whole duty at St. George's Hospital yesterday morning, 
and preached a charity sermon at St. Luke's in the afternoon, and 
at the old church in the evening ; and am very tired, body and 

mind My brain has been in such a whirl that I have 

had no time for deep thoughts. I can understand, by the events 
of the last few days, how the minds of men of business, at the 
very moment they are wielding the vastest commercial or physical 
power, may yet be degraded and superficial. One seems to do so 
much in ' business,' and yet with how little fruit : 7ve bustle, and 
God works. That glorious, silent Providence — such a contrast to 
physical power, with its blast furnaces and roaring steam engines ! 

" Farewell till to-moiTOw " 

He now settled as rector, at Eversley, with his wife ; and life 
flowed on peacefully, notwithstanding the anxieties of a sorely 
neglected parish, and the expenses of an old house which had not 
been repaired for more than a hundred years. Owing to the cir- 
cumstances under which the living fell vacant, the incoming tenant 
got no dilapidation-money, and had arrears of Poor Rates and 



Settled at E vers ley. yy 

the pay of the curate to meet. The house itself was damp and 
unwholesome, surrounded with ponds which overflowed with every 
heavy rain, and flooded not only the garden and stables, but all 
the rooms on the ground floor, keeping up master and servants 
sometimes all night, baihng out the water in buckets for hours 
together ; and drainage works had to be done before it was habi- 
table. From these causes, and from the charities falling almost 
entirely on the incumbent, the living, though a good one, was for 
years unremunerative ; but the young rector, happy in his home 
and his work, met all difficulties bravely ; and gradually in the 
course of years, the land was drained ; the ponds which ran through 
the garden and stood above the level of the dwelling rooms were 
filled up, and though the house was never healthy, it was habitable. 

New clubs for the poor, shoe club, coal club, maternal society, 
a loan fund and lending library, were established one after another. 
An intelligent young parishioner, who is still school-master, was 
sent by the rector to the Winchester Training College ; an adult 
school was held in the rectory three nights a week for all the win- 
ter months ; a Sunday school met there every Sunday morning and 
afternoon ; and weekly cottage lectures were established in all the 
out-lying districts for the old and feeble. The fact of there being 
no school-house had a good effect in drawing the people within the 
humanizing influences of the rectory, which was always open to 
them, and will ever be associated in the minds of young and old 
of this generation at Eversley, with the kind and courteous sym- 
pathy and the living teaching which they all got from their rector. 

At the beginning of his ministry there was not a grown-up man 
or woman among the laboring class who could read or write — for 
as boys and girls they had all been glad to escape early to field 
work from the parish clerk's little stifling room, ten feet square, 
where cobbling shoes, teaching, and caning went on together. As 
to religious instruction, they had had none. 

The church was nearly empty before the new curate came in 
1842. The farmers' sheep, when pasture was scarce, were turned 
into the neglected churchyard. Holy Communion was celebrated 
only three times a year ; the communicants were few ; the alms 
were collected in an old wooden saucer. A cracked kitchen basin 
inside the font held the water for Holy Baptism. At the altar, 
which was covered by a moth-eaten cloth, stood one old broken 



78 Charles Kings ley. 

chair; and so averse were the parish authorities to any change 
that when the new rector made a proposal for monthly commu- 
nions, it was only accepted on his promising himself to supply the 
wine for the celebration, the churchwardens refusing to provide 
except for the three great festivals. This he continued to do till a 
few years since, when Sir William Cope undertook the office of 
rector's churchwarden, and at once put this matter on a right 
footing. 

The evil results of such years of neglect could only be conquered 
by incessant labor, and the young rector's whole energies were de 
voted to the parish. He had to redeem it from barbarism : but 
it was a gentle barbarism, for the people, though not intelligently 
responsive, were a kindly people, civil and grateful for notice, and 
as yet wholly uninjured by indiscriminate almsgiving. He was 
daily with them in their cottages, and made a point of talking to 
the men and boys at their field work, till he was personally inti- 
mate with every soul in the parish, from the women at their wash- 
tubs, to the babies in the cradle, for whom he always had a loving 
word or look. Nothing escaped his eye. That hunger for knowl- 
edge on every subject, which characterized him through life, and 
made him ready to learn from every laboring man what he could 
tell him of his own farm work or the traditions of the place, had 
put him when he was curate on an easy human footing with the 
parishioners and was one secret of his influence ; so that before the 
state of his health obliged him, in 1848, to take a curate, he had 
got the parish thoroughly in hand. 

It was from his regular house to house visiting in the week, still 
more than his church services, that he acquired his power. If a 
man or woman were suffering or dying, he would go to them five 
and six times a day — and night as well as day — for his own heart's 
sake as well as for their soul's sake. Such visiting was very rare 
in those days. For years he seldom dined out ; never during the 
winter months, when the adult school and the cottage readings 
took up six evenings in the week ; and he seldom left the parish 
except for a few days at a time to take his family to the sea-side, 
which occurred the more frequently from the constant illness pro- 
duced by the damp rectory ; but he was never easy away from his 
work. 

His only relaxation was a few hours' fishing in some stream close 



First Confirmation. 79 

by. He never took a gun in hand, because from the poaching 
tastes of his people he felt it might bring him into unpleasant col- 
lision with them, and for this reason he never wished to be made a 
magistrate, lest he should have to sit on the bench in judgment on 
his parishioners. He could not afford to hunt, and when in after 
years he took a gallop now and then to refresh himself, and to see 
his friends in the hunting-field, where he was always welcome, it 
was on some old horse which he had picked up cheap for parson's 
work. " Another old screw, Mr. Kingsley,'' was said to him often 
by middle class men, who were well aware that he could ride, and 
that he knew a good horse when he saw it. They perhaps respected 
him all the more for his self-denial. At tliis time there were ken- 
nels in the parish; the fox-hounds (now known as Mr. Garth's) 
were kept at Bramshill, Sir John Cope being Master. His stable- 
men were a very respectable set of men, and most regular at church ; 
and the rector, though he could not afford to ride, had always a 
friendly word with the huntsman and whips ; his love of horses and 
dogs and knowledge of sport made an intimacy between them, and 
he soon won their respect and affection. Of this they gave early 
proof, for when the first confirmation after his induction was given 
out in church, and he invited all who wished to be confirmed to 
come down to the rectory for weekly instruction, the stud groom, a 
respectable man of five-and-thirty, was among the first to come, 
bringing a message from the whips and stablemen to say they had 
all been confirmed once, but if Mr. Kingsley wished it they would 
all be happy to come again ! 

It had hitherto been the custom in Eversley and the neighbor- 
ing parishes to let the confirmation candidates get over as they 
could to some distant church, where the catechumens of four or five 
parishes assembled to meet the bishop. Consequently the public- 
houses were usually full on confirmation day, which often ended in 
a mere drunken holiday for boys and girls, who had many miles to 
walk, and had neither superintendence nor refreshm&nt by the way 
provided for them. When he became rector, matters were ar- 
ranged very differently for the Eversley people. Each candidate 
was prepared separately as well as in class, for six weeks before- 
hand, and for the six Sundays previous to the confirmation, the 
catechism, creeds, and office of confirmation explained publicly. 
On the day itself the young people assembled early for refreshment 



So Charles Kingsley. 

at the rectory, whence they started in two vans for Heckfield 
church. He himself Avent with the boys, and his wife or some 
trustworthy person with the girls, and never lost sight of them till 
they returned, the girls to their homes, the boys and young men, 
some of them married men, who, from long years of neglect, had 
never been confirmed, to the rectory, where a good dinner awaited 
them, and they spent the evening in wandering over the glebe, or 
looking at curiosities and picture-books indoors, ending with a few 
words on their duty. So henceforth the solemn day was always 
associated with pleasant thoughts and an nmocent hoUday, which 
made the young people more inclined to come to him the week 
following to be prepared for Holy Communion. The appearance 
and manner of the Eversley catechumens were often remarked on 
— the quiet dresses of the girls, and the neat caps provided for 
them. These seem trifling matters to dwell on in days when such 
things are done decently and in order in all parishes : but thirty- 
two years ago Eversley set the example- on Confirmation as well 
as on many other days. 

His preaching was always remarkable. The only fault which 
Bishop Sumner found with the sermons he took up to show him 
when he went to Farnham for his Priest's Ordination, was that they 
Avere too colloquial : but it was this very peculiarity which arrested 
and attracted his hearers, and helped to fill a very empty church. 
His original mind and common sense alike revolted from the use 
of an unmeaning phraseology, and as all the facts of life were to 
him sacred, he was unfettered as to subject-matter and modes of 
expression. 

During the summer of 1844 he made acquaintance with Mr. Mau- 
rice, to whose writings he owed so much ; and the acquaintance 
soon strengthened into a deep and enduring friendship. In the fol- 
lowing letter he first ventured to consult him on his difficulties. 

"My Dear Sir, 

"I must apologise for addressing one so much my superior, 
and so slightly acquainted with me, but where shall the young 
priest go for advice, but to the elder prophet ? To your works I 
am indebted for the foundation of any coherent view of the word of 
God, the meaning of the Church of England, and the spiritual 
phenomena of the ]:)resent and past ages. And as through your 
thoughts God's spirit has given me catholicity, to whom therefore 
can I better go for details on any of these points ? 



Letter from F. D. MaiLrice. 8i 

" Two things are very troublesome to me at present. The want 
of any j^hilosophical method of reading the Scriptures, without see- 
ing in them merely proofs of human systems ; and the great prev- 
alence of the Baptist form of dissent in my parish. The latter I 
find myself unable to cope with, founded as it is on supra-lapsarian 
Calvinistic dogmas, which have been received into the heart as the 
deepest counsels of God. 

" I therefore beg the favor of your advice upon these two sub- 
jects, and feeling that much may be said that would not be written, 
I must beg, if I am not guilty of too great an intrusion, that you 
would grant me an interview with you in London. 

" I know that the request is informal according to the ways of 
the world, but I have faith enough in you to be sure that you will 
take the request for what it is, an earnest struggle to get wisdom at 
all risks from any quarter where it may be found." .^ . . . 

The reply was as follows, and is given by the kind permission of 
Mr. Maurice's executors. 

REV. F. D. MAURICE TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 

July 22, 1844. 

" . . . I should be sorry not to give you the experience of 
any blunders I may have committed in past time, with such expe- 
rience as has been the fruit of them, and it is sometimes easier to 
recover the different fragments of this experience, and to piece 
them together in writing than in speaking. 

" With respect to the study of the Scriptures, my own great error 
has been that I have formed and abandoned so many plans, any 
one of which, honestly pursued, might have led to good results. 
I fancy this is a prevalent temptation, though I have yielded to it 
and suffered from it more than any of my acquaintances. As I 
would turn diseases to commodity, or, at least, as God is some- 
times mercifully pleased to do this for us, I think I may say that 
all the deplorable waste of time which these changes have oc- 
casioned, has brought with it this compensation, that I have been 
solemnly and inwardly impressed with the truth, that the Bible, as 
a means of attaining to the knowledge of the living God, is pre- 
cious beyond all expression or conception ; when made a substi- 
tute for that knowledge, may become a greater deadener to the 
human spirit than all other books. 

" The method of the Bible itself, and the means of its being 
overlooked, I tliink become more and more clear to us, as we keep 
this consideration before us. If it be a human history, contaming 
a gradual discovery of God, which discovery awakens the very fac- 
ulties and apprehensions which are to receive it, the treatment of 
it as a collection of notions, either about the invisible world or our 
6 



82 Charles Kings ley. 

own duty, must entirely mislead us in all our studies ; and whether 
we rate it high or low, whether we extol it as the one rule of faith, 
maintain its autliority to be concurrent with that of Church tradi- 
tion, or look upon it merely as a set of fragments containing the 
speculations of a certain nation about religious questions, the re- 
sult will be much the same. In each case the end of the book 
will be lost, and therefore all the steps to that end will be confused 
and incomprehensible. But if once the teaciaers in our theological 
schools would have courage to proclaim theology to be the knowl- 
edge of God, and not the teaching of a religion, I am satisfied that 
the scientific character of the Bible could be brought out as con- 
spicuously as its practical character, one being seen to be involved 
in the other. Then it would not be necessary to assert for theol- 
ogy its place in the scientia scientiarum^ or to bid others fall into 
their places in connection with it, and subordination to it ; nor 
would it be necessary to be perpetually proclaiming church author- 
ity in favor of such and such doctrines. The truths concerning 
God would be felt so essential to the elucidation of those concern- 
ing man and nature, the relations of one to the other would be so ev- 
ident, there would be such a life infused into the features of human 
knowledge, and such a beautiful order and unity in the whole of it, 
that the opposition to them would be recognized as proceeding 
just as much from ])rejudice and ignorance, sure to disappear when- 
ever there were not moral causes to sustain them, as the opposition 
to gravitation or any of the most acknowledged physical or mathe- 
matical principles. I do not mean that this effect would follow 
suddenly, or that the actual impediments to the gospel from human 
pride and wickedness would be less felt. I suppose they would be 
more felt after it had followed. But we should not then be obliged 
to acknowledge that much of the resistance to the most precious 
principles may actually proceed from a love to some others, or 
even to those same ; we should not hear such a din of voices cry- 
ing out for this thing and that ; and nearly forgetting God in their 
love for abstractions ; we should not see so much violent straining 
and perverting of texts to serve a purpose ; we should have much 
less idolatry of the Bible, and much more reverence for it. And 
the hard-working clergy of our parishes, having been trained in 
such a school before they entered upon practical duty, would feel 
a clearness in their minds, a readiness for occasions, a power of 
bringing their studies to bear upon life, instead of being obliged, as 
is now so much the case, either to shut their eyes against any new 
light, or else to destroy and reconstruct their system each time that 
any is vouchsafed to them. But since our universities afford us no 
teaching of this kind at present, we must try to profit by the helps 
which we have. Our actual work is, I think, the best of these 
helps. It forces us, whether we will or no, out of the routine of 
systems, and leads us to seek for something in scripture which is 



Letter from F. D. Maurice. 83 

altogether unlike them. And though I would strongly urge every 
one not to lose sight of the idea of that system of which I have 
spoken, I would by no means recommend any one who was not 
working as a professed theologian in the schools, to spend his time 
in contriving how he may adjust his own reading to it. The use of 
it to him v.'ill be far greater if he recollects that it exists when he 
is reading a single book, or chapter, or text, than if he determines 
doggedly to follow out the traces of it from Genesis to Revelation. 
The subject of his studies, I should think, must be always best de- 
termined by the wants of his parish. In preaching, I have always 
found it best to follow the order of the services, taking my subject 
from the epistle, gospel, collect, or first lesson, and 1 think if we 
read on a ])lan, we can hardly find a much better one. The study 
of words also is, I think, of immense profit, especially of famiUes 
of words, as e.g., SLKatoo), cocrts, w/xa, oa-'jv-q, through an epistle, or 
through many. Schmidt's 'Concordance' is worth much more, it 
seems to me, than Schleusner's or Eretschneider's Lexicons; 
though I do not mean to say they are of no value. I think^ too, 
that it is desirable, cautiously and deliberately to question our- 
selves about the leading idea of any Epistle ; I say cautiously and 
deliberately, because the mere taking up with customary formulas 
on the subject, such as that, the Epistles to the Romans and Gala- 
tians are about justification, will, 1 am satisfied, lead us astray. 
These Epistles are, I am convinced, strikingly different in their 
object and character. With respect to the Romans, the great mis- 
chief is, that commentators generally start from the third chapter, 
looking upon the first and second as merely an introduction or 
prologue, whereas any simple reader must perceive that St. Paul 
enters at once on his subject, and that it is really the cjiavipu>arL<; t% 
SLKaio(jvvr]<; tou 6eov, and not an abstract theory of justification." 

" . . . It is difficult to speak on the second point in your 
letter — the Baptists in your parish — without knowing how far they 
are, or are not, practically Antinomian. In many places they are, 
and a very vulgar brutal sect of Antinomians. Mr. Hall, who was 
a Baptist, describes such a class of men as existing in his body, 
and attacks them with a fury which proves that they must have 
acquired great infiuence, and have been very numerous in his life- 
time. In that case I should not be inclined to argue with them 
against their ultra-Calvinism, or to show them how it strengthens 
them in their evil courses ; I would rather admit what they say 
when they refer man's goodness and conversion to the will of God, 
and press the assertic^n of the apostle, ' This is the will of God, 
even your sanctification,' that all the purposes of God's decrees 
must be to make men righteous as He is, and that if the decrees to 
which they appeal do not produce this result, they are not His, but 
the devil's. And since their complaint of infant baptism must be 
on the ground that the children have yet given no sign of faith in 



84 Charles Kings ley. 

God, you may, without any personality, or any direct allusion to 
themselves, ask how far the facts warrant us in expecting any 
better result from the mature conscious baptism. Supposing, how- 
ever, they should be honest, earnest men, however outrageous may 
be their statements, I should be disposed rather to take advantage 
of their doctrine, than to repudiate it. You say that man's fall, 
and all other events, were parts of a gi'eat scheme of God. Well ! 
I grant you that the fall did not in the least frustrate the scheme 
of God. I grant you that it is very wrong to speak as if He had 
merely devised a scheme as a remedy for the consequences of the 
fall. Christ was before all things, and by Him all things consist. 
In Him He created man, and His incarnation, though it came 
later than the fall, was really in God's purpose before it. What 
we preach is, that men, being endued with that flesh and blood 
which Christ took, are to be looked upon as objects of God's love, 
and that they are to be accused of setting at nought that love. 
We do not set aside election ; our baptism is the witness for it. 
By it we refer all things to God ; we testify that He chooses with- 
out reference to their previous merits or holiness, and that all gifts 
and graces come from Him. Of course such a statement as this 
will be varied according to the capacities of the auditor, and the 
nature of his objections ; but it is the kind of Unguage I should 
use, and that not from any calculation as to the effects it might 
produce, but from believing it to be the truest and honestest. In 
supra-lapsarian Calvinism, there lies a deep recognition of God as 
a living being, an originating will, which the feeble, frittering , 
phrases of Arminianism can provide no substitute for. The great 
misery of the Calvinist is, his constant substitution of the idea of 
sovereignty for that of righteousness, which is the one always 
brought before us in Scripture. I would seek to deliver him from 
that evil, but as far as possible keeping entire and unhurt that 
which he has already." .... 

We return to his ©"wii letters. 

The news of his brother Lieut, Kingsle3''s death from fever in 
Torres Straits, on board H.M.S. " RoyaUst," now reached Eng- 
land, and he writes to his wife from 

Chelsea, February 26, 1845. 

« , . . It is sad — very sad — but what is to be said ? I saw 
huB twice last night in two different dreams — strong and well — and 
so much grown — and I kissed him and wept over him — and woke 
to the everlasting No ! 

" As far as externals go, it has been very sad. The sailors say 
commonly that there is but a sheet of paper between Torres Straits 



Death of Lieitt. Kings ley. 85 

and Hell. And there he lay, and the wretched crew, in the little 
brig, roasting and pining, day after day — never heard of, or hearing 
of living soul for a year and a half. The commander died — half 
the crew died — and so they died and died on, till in May no officer 
was left but Gerald, and on the 17th of September he died too, 
and so faded away, and we shall never see hiin more — for ever ? 
God that saved me knows. Then one Parkinson, the boatswain, 
had to promote himself to keep the pendant flying, all the officers 
being dead, and in despair left his post and so brought the brig 
home to Singapore, with great difficulty, leaking, with her mast 
sprung — her crew half dead — a doomed vessel. O God, Thou 
alone knovvest the long bitter withering baptism of fire, wherewith 
the poor boy was baptized, day and night alone with his own soul. 
And yet Thou wert right — as ever — perhaps there was no way but 
that to bring him to look himself in the face, and know that life 
was a reality, and not a game ! And who dare say that in those 
weary, weary months of hope deferred, the heart eating at itself, 
did not gnaw through the crust of vanities (not of so very long 
growth either), and the living water which he did drink in his 
childhood find vent and bubble up ! Why not — seeing that God 
is love?" .... 



Early in 1S45 Dean Wood, of the Collegiate Church of Middle- 
ham, having two vacant stalls to dispose of, offered one to his son, 
the Rev. Peter Wood, now Rector of Copford, and the other to 
Charles Kingsley, his son's old college friend. The canonries 
were honorary, and had no duties connected with them, but being 
of historic interest, the two friends accepted the honor, and 
went down together to be inducted, to the stalls of St. Anthony 
and St. George. The deanery was abolished in 1856, on the 
• death of Dean Wood. This was his first visit to Yorkshire, 
a county attractive to him, from its people as much as from its 
■scenery. 

The rest of the year was spent quietly at Eversley in parish work 
and sermon writing : but the state of parties in Church and State, 
especially the former, lay heavy on his heart, and made him very 
anxious to join or start some periodical in which the young men of 
the day could find a vehicle for free expression of their opinions. 
The ' Oxford and Cambridge Review ' was then in existence, and 
it was proposed to make that the vehicle, and if not, to start a new 
one. On all these points Mr, Maurice was consulted, though he 
would not join. 



S6 Charles Kingsley. 

TO THE REV. R. COWLEY POWLES. 

Chelsea, December ii, 1845. 

" About the 'Oxford and Cambridge Review.' — Froude seems 
to dread any fresh start, .... and I shall chew the cud and 
try to find out my own way a little longer before I begin trying to 
lead others. 

'' God help us all ! for such a distempered tangled juncture 
must end in the cutting of the Gordian knot, by the higher or 
lower powers ; and as the. higher have fairly denied their cutting 
ability and have given it up, perhaps the lower iriay try their hands 
at it. 1 would, if 1 were hovering between nine shillings a week 
and the workhouse, as the sum of all attainabilities this side of 
heaven. God help us all ! I say again ; for there is no counsel to 
be got anywhere from man, and as for God's book, men have 
made it mean anything and nothing, with their commenting and 
squabbhng, and doctrine picking, till one asks with Pilate, ' What is 
truth ? ' Well, at all events, God knows, and Christ the King 
knows, and so all must go right at last, but in the meantime ? 

" I am just now a sort of religious Shelley, an Ishmael of catho- 
licity, a John the Baptist, minus his spirit and power, alas ! be- 
moaning myself in the wilderness. Were I to stop praying, and 
remembering my own sins daily, 1 could becom'e a Democritus 
Junior, and sitting upon the bench of contemplation, make the 
world my cock-pit, wherein main after main of cocklets — the 
' shell,' alas ! scarce ' off their heads,' come forth to slay and be 
slain, mutually, for no quarrel, except ' thou-cock art not me-cock, 
therefore fight ! ' But I had as soon be the devil as old Lucretius, 
to sit with him in the ' Sapientum templa serena, despicere unde 
queas alios, atque, cernere passim errantes.' One must feel for 
one's fellows — so much better, two out of three of them than one's 
self, though they will fill themselves with the east wind, and be 
proportionably dyspeptic and sulky. 

" Nobody trusts nobody. The clergy are split up into innumer- 
able parties, principally nomadic. Every one afraid to speak. 
Every one unwilling to listen to his neighbor ; and in the mean- 
time vast sums are spent, and vast work undertaken, and yet 
nobody is content. Everybody swears we are going backward. 
Everybody swears it is not his fault, but the Evangelicals, or the 
Puseyites, or the Papists, or the ministry ; or everybody, in shorf, 
who does not agree with him. Pardon this jeremiad, but I am an 
owl in the desert, and it is too sad to see a huge and busy body of 
clergy, utterly unable to gain the confidence or spiritual guidance 
of the nation, and yet never honestly taking the blame each man 
upon himself, and saying, ' I, not ye have sinned.' 

"Pardon, again, ihis threnodia, but I am sick of matters, and do 
earnestly wish for some one to whom to pour out my heart. The 



• Hiving a Swarm of Bees. Sy 

principles which the great kings and bishops of the middle ages, 
and our reformers of the i6th century felt to be the foundation of 
a Church and nation, are now set at nought equally by those 
who pretend to worship the middle ages, and those who swear by 
the reformers. And Popery and Puritanism seem to be fighting 
their battle over again in England, on the foul middle ground of 
mammonite infidelity. They are re-appearing in weaker and less 
sincere forms, but does that indicate the approach of their individ- 
ual death, or our general decay ? He who will tell me this shall be 

my prophet ; till then 1 must be my own 

" . . . . My game is gradually opening before me, and my ideas 
getting developed, and ' fixed,' as the Germans would say. But, 
alas ! as Hare has it, is not in one sense ' every man a liar ? ' false 
to his own idea, again and again, even if, which is rare now-a-days, 
we have one ? " 

TO HIS WIFE. 

EvERSLEY, May, 1846. 

" . . . I got home at four this morning after a delicious 
walk — a poem in itself I never saw such a sight before as the 
mists on the heath and valleys, and never knew what a real bird 
chorus was. I am lonely enough, but right glad I came, as there 

is plenty to do I shall start to-morrow morning, and 

will lose no time waiting for coaches at Ryde, but walk on at once 

to Shanklin. St. Elizabeth progresses, and consolidates 

I have had a great treat to-day ; saw a swarm of bees hived, for 
the first time in my hfe. Smith was gone to Heckfield, -so G. 
White sent his cart for old Home ; and I stood in the middle of 
the flying army, and saw the whole to my great delight. Certainly 
man, even in the lowest grade, is infinitely wonderful, and infinitely 
brave — give him habit and self-confidence. To see all those little 
poisonous insects crawling over Home, wrapt in the one thought 
of their new-born sister-queen ! I hate to think that it is vile self- 
interest — much less mere brute magnetism (called b}^ the ignorant 
'instinct'), which takes with them the form of loyalty, prudence, 
order, self-sacrifice. How do we know that they have no souls ? 
'The beasts which perish ? ' Ay, but put against that 'the spirit 
of the beast which goeth downward to the earth' — and whither 
then ? ' Man perisheth,' too, in scripture language, yet not for 
ever. But I will not dream, 

"I fancy you and baby playing in the morning. Bless you, my 

two treasures 1 had a most busy and interesting day 

yesterday in London. Called on * * * and found him under- 
going all the horrors of a deep, and as I do think, healthy baptism 
of fire — not only a conversion, but a discovery that God and the 
devil are living realities, figliting for his body and soul. This, 
in a man of vast thought and feeling, who has been for years a 



88 Charles Kings ley. 

confirmed materialist, is hard work. He entreated me not to 

leave him 

" God help us all. and save our country — not so much from the 
fate of France, as from the fate of Rome — internal decay, and fall- 
ing to pieces by its own weight ; but I will say no more of this — 
perhaps 1 think too much about it." .... 

TO THE REV. R. C. POWLES. 

December, 1846. 

" Do not, for God's sake, compliment me. If you knew the 
mean, inconsistent, desultory being I am in action, in spite of my 
fine words, you would be ashamed of me, as I am of myself. But 
I cannot stave off the conviction of present danger and radical 
disease in our national religion. And though I laugh at myself 
sometimes for conceit and uncharitableness — tamen usque recurrit — 
that hand-writing on the wall ; that ' mene, mene ' against Angli- 
canism and Evangelicalism at once — both of which more and more 
daily prove to me their utter impotence to meet our social evils. 
Six months in a country parish is enough to prove it. What is to 
be done I do not see. A crisis, political and social, seems approach- 
ing, and religion, like a rootless plant, may be brushed away in the 
struggle. Maurice is full of fear — I had almost said despondence — 
and he, as you know, has said in his last book, that ' The real struggle 
of the day will be, not between Popery and Protestantism, but be- 
tween Atheism and Christ.' And here we are daubing walls with 
untempered mortar — quarrelling about how we shall patch the 
superstructure, forgetting that the foundation is gone — Faith in 
anything. As in the days of Noah with the Titans — as in the days 
of Mahomet with the Christian sects of the East, they were eating, 
and drinking, and quarrelling, no doubt, and behold the flood 
came and swept them all away. And even such to me seems the 
prospect of the English Church. 

" People say indignantly, ' Oh ! but look at her piety ; look at 
the revival ; her gospel doctrines ; her church-building. She is 
beginning to live and not to die.' But we who have read history 
know how the candle always flames up at the last with a false gal- 
vanic life, when the spirit is goae. Remember the Church in Eng- 
land just before the Reformation, how she burst out into new life ; 
how she reformed her monasteries ; how she filled her pulpits ; 
how she built more churches and colleges in fifty years than she had 
in two hundred before — Somersetshire as a single example — how 
she was in every respect, within as well as without, immeasurably 
improved just before the monasteries were dissolved. But her 
time was come. ' The old order ' was to ' change,' ' giving place 
to the new ' while God ' fulfils Himself in many ways,' as Tennyson 
has it. And not even a More and a Fisher could save her from 



A Periodical Proposed. 89 

her fire-death, and phoenix resurrection. Mene ! Mene ! I say- 
again for us. 

"But we. must, in the widest and divinest sense, make friends of 
the Mammon of. unrighteousness. It is the new commercial aris- 
tocracy ; it is the scientific go-ahead-ism of the day which must 
save us, and which we must save. We have licked the feet of the 
feudal aristocrats for centuries, and see whither they have brought 
us, or let us bring ourselves. In plain truth, the English clergy 
must Arnold-ise, if they do not wish to go either to Rome or to the 
workhouse, before fifty years are out. There is, I do believe, an 
Arnoldite spirit rising ; but most ' laudant, non sequuntur.' De- 
cent Anglicanism, decent Evangelical Conservatism (or Evangeli- 
calism) having become the majority, is now quite Conservative, 
and each party playing Canute and the tide, as it can scramble 
into the chair of authority, I would devote soul and body to get 
together an Arnoldite party of young men. If we could but begin 
a periodical in which every one should be responsible by name for 
his own article, thereby covering any little difierences of opinion, 
such as must always exist in a reforming party (though not in a 
dead-bone-galvanising one, like the Tractarians). If we could but 
start anything daring and earnest as a ' coroccio,' or flag of misery, 
round which, as round David in the mountains, the spiritual rag- 
tag might rally, and howl harmonious the wrongs of the clergy and 
of literary men, it were a great thing gained ! 

" I have had serious thoughts of what such a thing ought to be. 
Its two mottoes should be Anti-Manichccism — (and therefore Anti- 
Tractarian, and Anti-Evangelical) and Anti-Atheism. To attack 
unsparingly those two things in every one, from the bishop to the 
peasant; and to try, on the positive side, to show how all this pro- 
gress of society in the present day is really of God, and God's 
work, and has potential and latent spiritual elements, which it is 
the duty and the glory of the clergy, if they are a clergy, to unfold 
and christen. We should require a set of articles on Church Re- 
form, a set on the Art of Worship, which should show that the 
worshipless state of Evangelicalism is no more necessary than good, 
and that Protestantism can just as much inspire itself into a glorious 
artistic ritual of its own, as Popery and Anglicanism have into one 
of their own. Then we should want a set of Condition-of-the-Poor- 
Ballads or articles, or anything ' spicy ' on that point. A set on 
the Religion of Science, and a set on Modern Poetry and the 
Drama, cursing the opera and praying for the revival of the legiti- 
mate. 

" This, I think, might keep the game alive, if men would only be 
bold and 'ride recklessly across country.' As soon as a man's 
blood is cool, the faster he goes the safer he goes. Try to pick 
your way and you tumble down. If men would but believe this 
and be bold; we want some of that 'absolutism' which gave 



90 Charles Kingsley. 

strength to the Middle Ages ; and it is only the tyranny of fashion 
and respectability which keeps us from it ; for put the Englishman 
into a new country, break the thrall of habit and the fear of man, 
and he becomes great, absolute, Titanic at once." 

The Magazine plan came to nothing, and 1846 passed unevent- 
less in the routine of parish work and home happiness. Adult 
classes, a music class on HuUah's plan to improve the church 
music (which had been entirely in the hands of three or four poor 
men, with a trombone and two clarionets) brought his people on 
several nights in the week up to the rectory, where the long, un- 
furnished dining-room served the purpose of schoolroom. He never 
cared to leave his quiet home, doubly enriched by the presence of 
a little daughter. 

The following year his " Life of St. Elizabeth," which was 
begun in prose in 1842, and had been gradually growing under his 
hand, took the form of a drama. After working at it in this new 
form for some months, the thought of publishing it crossed his 
mind ; but he was so uncertain as to whether it was worth print- 
ing, that he decided nothing till he had consulted four friends on 
whose judgment and poetical verdict he could rely — the Hon. and 
Rev. Gerald Wellesley, then Rector of Strathfieldsaye, now Dean 
of Windsor ; Rev. F. D. Maurice ; Rev. Derwent Coleridge, of 
St. Mark's ; and the Rev. R. C. Powles. Their opinion was unani- 
mous, but the difficulty was to find a publisher who would under- 
take the work of a young and unknown author. He took the MSS. 
to London, from whence he wrote home. 

" I breakfasted with Maurice this morning, and went over a great 
deal of St. Elizabeth, and I cannot tell you how thankful I am to 
God about it. He' has quite changed his mind about scene i of 
act ii., Elizabeth's bower. He read it to Powles, who is decidedly 
for keeping it in just as it is, and thinks it ought to offend no one. 
He is very desirous to show the MSS. to A. G. Scott, Mrs. H. 
Coleridge, Tennyson, and Van Artevelde Taylor. He says that 
it ought to do great good with those who can take it in, but for 
those who cannot, it ought to have a preface : and has more than 
hinted that he will help me to one, by writing me something which, 
if I like, I can prefix. What more would you have ?...." 

"Coleridge's opinion of the poem is far higher than I expected. 
He sent me to Pickering with a highly recommendatory note ; which 
however, joined with Maurice's preface, was not sufficient to make 
him take the risk off my hands. 



SL Elizabeth in Press. 91 

"I am now going to Parker's, in the Strand. I am at once 
very happy, very lonely, and very anxious. How absence in- 
creases love ! It is positively good sometimes to be parted, that 
one's affection may become conscious of itself, and proud, and 
humble, and thankful accordingly " 

Messrs. Parker, of 445 West Strand, undertook the publication, 
and he writes joyfully to Mr. Powles : 

"St. Elizabeth is in the press, having been taken off my hands 
by the heroic magnanimity of Mr. J. Parker, West Strand, who, 
though a burnt child, does not dread the fire. No one else would 
have it. 

"Maurice's preface comes out with it, and is inestimably not only 
to I myself I, but to all men who shall have the luck to read it, 
and the wit to understand it. I had hoped to have shown it to 
you before it went, but ' non concessere columnae.' " 

His eldest son was born this year, and named after Mr. Maurice, 
who with Mr. Powles, stood sponsors to the boy. In the summer 
he took his wife and two children for six weeks to Milford, a little 
sea-side place near the edge of the New Poorest. It was his first 
six weeks' holiday since his marriage, which he earned by taking 
the Sunday services of Pennington, near Lymington. Here he had 
a horse, and the rides in the beautiful scenery of the New Forest, 
dear to him from old association with his father's youth and man- 
hood, excited his imagination. It was only either at a great crisis 
in his life, or in a time when all his surroundings were in perfect 
harmony, that he could compose poetry. And now, when in the 
forest, and in the saddle once more, or alone with his beloved ones, 
with leisure to watch his babies, his heart's spring bubbled up into 
song, and he composed several ballads : — " Oh she tripped over 
Ocknell plain," "The Red King," and "The Outlaw." 

He explored the forest day after day, with deep delight, and 
laid up a store of impressions which in later years he began to 
work up into a New Forest Novel. This, however, was never 
completed. 



CHAPTER VII. 



Aged 29. 

Publication of " Saint's Tragedy" — Chartist Riots — Tenth of April — Politics for 
the People — Professorship at Queen's College — " Yeast " — Illness. 

This year, so marked in the history of Europe, was one of the 
most important of Charles Kingsley's life. " The Saint's Tragedy" 
was published soon after Christmas, and, though it made little im- 
pression on the literary world in England, yet gave him in one 
sense a new position, especially among young men at the universi- 
ties. The Drama was eagerly read at Oxford, and fiercely at- 
tacked by the high church party, who were to be made still more 
bitter against its author by the publication of "Yeast," which came 
out later in the year as a serial in " Eraser's Magazine." He was 
surprised himself to find the interest "The Saint's Tragedy" had 
excited at Oxford. In Germany it was read and appreciated, 
and Chevalier Bunsen expressed his opinion in very strong terms 
about it. In higher quarters still the genius of the author was 
recognized. 

The Tragedy was reviewed, not very favorably, by Mr. (after- 
wards Professor) Conington at Oxford. This, however, led to an 
acquaintance, between author and critic, which soon ripened into 
friendship ; and when, in the course of a few months, " Politics for 
the People" were pubhshed, Mr. Conington became not only a 
warm ally in the cause, but a regular contributor, and constant 
visitor at Eversley. 

During the winter he went to Oxford to stay a few days with his 
friend, Mr. Powles, Fellow of Exeter : and he writes to his 
wife : — 

Oxford, March 30, 1848. 

'* . . . I may, I suppose, tell you that I am here undergoing 
the new process of being made a lion of, at least so Powles tells 
me. They got up a meeting for me, and the club was crowded 



Parish- Work. 93 

with men ii'.erely to see poor me, so I found out afterwards : very 
lucky that I did not know it during the process of being trotted 
out. It is very funny and new. 1 dine this afternoon with Con- 
ington ; to-morrow with Palgrave ; Monday with Stanley, and so 
on. I like Conington very much ; he is a good, hearty piece of 
nature; and I like his review very much. Of course he did not 
go to the bottom on the Love and Marriage question ; but there 
he shovved his sense, Froude gets more and more interesting. 
We had such a conversation this morning — the crust is breaking, 
and the man coming through that cold polished shell. My darling 
babies ! kiss them very much for me. Monday I go to Chalgi-ove 
Field, to see Hampden's martyr place." 

His parish work this year was if possible more vigorous than 
ever. Every winter's evening was occupied with either night- 
school at the rectory, about thirty men attending ; or little services 
in the outlying cottages for the infirm and laboring men after their 
day's work. During the spring and summer a writing class was 
held for girls in the empty coach-house ; a cottage school for in- 
fants was also begun on the common — all preparing the way for 
the National School that was to be built some years later, and for 
which the teacher was in training. The parish made a great step 
forward. The number of communicants increased. The daily 
services and evening sermons in Passion week seemed to borrow 
intenser fervor and interest from the strange events of the great 
world outside the small quiet parish, and though poorly attended, 
still gathered together a few laboring folk. 

The political events which shook all Europe to its very founda- 
tions, stirred his blood, and seemed for the time to give him a 
supernatural strength, which kept up till the autumn, when he 
completely broke down. He wrote an article for "Eraser's Maga- 
zine " (the first he ever contributed to a periodical) on Popery : 
" Why should we fear the Romish Priests?" following up his 
" Saint's Tragedy," which had struck the key note of the after 
work of his life ; and " Yeast " now was seething in his mind. Of 
his contributions to "Politics for the People" more will be said 
hereafter. He preached to his people on emigration, on poaching,- 
and on the political and social disturbances of the day. In addi- 
tion to parish and literary work he accepted the Professorship of 
English Literature and Composition at Queen's College, Harley 
Street, then in its infancy, of which Mr. Maurice was President, 



94 Charles Kings ley, 

and he went up to London to give a lecture once a week. He was 
also proposed for a professorship at King's College. He was in 
constant communication with Mr. Maurice and the knot of re- 
markable men who gathered round him. He made acquaintance 
with Bishop Stanley, of Norwich, and his distinguished son ; with 
Archdeacon Hare, Arthur Helps, John Hullah, James Anthony 
Froude, John Malcolm Ludlow, and many other men of mark, but 
to none did he become more strongly attached than to Mr. Thomas 
Hughes. 

On the news of the Chartist rising and petition reaching Evers- 
ley, he determined, having closed his evening classes in the parish 
for the winter, to go to London for a few days ; and on the morn- 
ing of the loth of April, with his friend Mr. John Parker, jun., who 
had been spending the Sunday at Eversley, he went up to see 
what was going on. Mr. Parker, like many owners of property in 
London, was nervous and anxious about the results of the day, 
telling Mrs. Kingsley, half in joke as he left the door, that she 
might expect to hear of his shop having been broken into, and 
himself thrown into the Trafalgar Square fountains by the mob. 

On arriving in London, they went to the house of business at 
445 West Strand, then on to Mr. Maurice's ; and in the afternoon 
he and Mr. Ludlow walked to Kennington Common, where pour- 
ing rain damped the spirits of the crowds assembled. By mid-day 
post he wrote to Eversley. 

London, April lo, Monday. 

" . . . All is right as yet. Large crowds,' but no one expects 
any row, as the Chartists will not face Westminster Bridge, but are 
gone round by London Bridge and Holborn, and are going to send 
up only the legal number of Delegates to the House. 1 am just 
going on to Maurice. The only fear is maurauding in the suburbs 
at night; but do not fear for me, I shall be safe at Chelsea at 5. 
I met Colonel Herman, who says there is no danger at all, and 
the two Mansfields, who are gone as specials, to get hot, dusty, 
and tired — nothing else. I will send down a letter by the latest 
post." 

April 11^ Evening. 

"The events of a week have been crowded into a few hours. I 
was up till 4 this morning, writing posting placards under Maurice's 
auspices, one of which is to be got out to-morrow morning, the 
rest when we can get money. Could you not beg a few sovereigns 



Address to Workmen. 95 

somewhere, to help these poor wretches to the truest ahns ? — to 
words — texts from the Psahns, anything which may keep one 
man from cutting his brother's throat to-morrow or Friday ? Pray, 
pray, help us. Maurice has given me the highest proof of confi- 
dence. He has taken me into counsel, and we ai-e to have meet- 
ngs for prayer and study, when I come up to London, and we are 
to bring out a new set of real ' Tracts for the Times,' addressed to 
the higher orders. Maurice is d la haiUeur des circo7istances — de- 
termined to make a decisive move. He says: 'If the Oxford 
tracts did wonders, why should not we ? Pray for us. A glorious 
future is opening, and both Maurice and Ludlow seem to have 
driven away all my doubts and sorrows, and I see the blue sky 
again and my Father's face ! " 

On Wednesday, the 12th, all was still quiet, and this placard 
which he had written was posted up, in London. 

" WORKMEN OF ENGLAND ! 

" You say that you are wronged. Many of you are wronged ; 
and many besides yourselves know it. Almost all men who have 
heads and hearts know it — above all, the working clergy know it. 
They go into your houses, they see the shameful filth and dark- 
ness* in which you are forced to live crowded together ; they see 
your children growing up in ignorance and temptation, for want 
of fit education ; they see intelligent and well-read men among 
you, shut out from a Freeman's just right of voting ; and they see 
too the noble patience and self-control with which you have as yet 
borne these evils. They see it, and God sees it. 

" Workmen of England ! You have more friends than you 
think for. Friends who expect nothing from you, but who love 
you, because you are their brothers, and who fear God, and there- 
fore dare not neglect you, His children ; men who are drudging 
and sacrificing themselves to get you your rights ; men who know 
what your rights are, better than you know yourselves, who are 
trying to get for you something nobler than charters and dozens of 
Acts of Parliament — more useful than this 'fifty thousandth share 
in a Talker in the National Palaver at Westminster 'f can give you. 
You may disbelieve them, insult them — you cannot stop their 
working for you, beseeching you as you love yourselves, to turn 
back from the precipice of riot, which ends in the gulf of universal 
distrust, stagnation, starvation. 

" You think the Charter would make you free — would to God it 
would ! The Charter is not bad ; if the men who nse it are not 
bad ! But will the Charter make you free ? Will it free you from 

* The Window tax was not then taken off. f Cailyle. 



g6 Charles Kingsley. 

slavery to ten-pound bribes? Slavery to beer and gin? Slavery 
to every spouter who flatters your self-conceit, and stirs up bitter- 
ness and headlong rage in you ? That, I guess, is real slavery ; 
to be a slave to one's own stomach, one's own pocket, one's own 
temper. Will the Charter cwxq that ? Friends, you want more 
than Acts of Parliament can give. 

" Englishmen ! Saxons 1 Workers of the great, cool-headed, 
strong -handed nation of England, the workshop of the world, the 
leader of freedom for 700 years, men say you have common-sense ! 
then do not humbug yourselves into meaning ' licence,' when you 
cry for ' liberty ; ' who would dare refuse you freedom ? for the Al- 
mighty God, and Jesus Christ, the poor Man, who died for poor 
men, will bring it about for you, though all the Mammonites of the 
earth were against you. A nobler day is dawning for England, a 
day of freedom, science, industry ! 

" But there will be no true freedom without virtue, no true 
science without religion, no true industry without the fear of God, 
and love to your fellow-citizens. 

" Workers of England, be wise, and then you must be free, for 
you will he. Jit to be free. 

" A Working Parson." 

On the evening of the T2th, Archdeacon Hare, Mr. Maurice, 
and this little group of friends assembled at Mr. John Parker's 
rooms, West Strand, whence he writes home, 

Parker's, Strand, April 12, 6 p.m. 

". . . I really cannot go home this afternoon. I have spent 
i*- with Archdeacon Hare, and Parker, starting a new periodical — 
a Penny ' People's Friend,' in which Maurice, Hare, Ludlow, 
Mansfield, and I, &c. are going to set to work, to supply the place 
of the defunct 'Saturday Magazine.' I send you my first placard. 
Maurice is delighted with it. I cannot tell you the interest which 
it has excited with every one who has seen it. It brought the 
tears into old Parker's eyes, who was once a working printer's boy. 
1 have got already ^2 10s. towards bringing out more, and 
Maurice is subscription-hunting for me. He took me to Jelf to- 
day, the King's College principal, who received me very kindly, 
and expressed himself very anxious to get me the professorship, 
and will write to me as soon as the advertisements are out. I will 
be down at Winchfield to-morrow. Kiss the babes for me. Parker 
begs to remark that he has not been thrown into the Trafalgar 
fountain." 

On the 13th he returned to Eversley much exhausted, and 
preached on the Chartist riots to his own people the following 



Mr. Hughes Recollections. 97 

Sunday. And now working in his parish, writing for the " Politics," 
pieparing his lecture for Queen's College, and sending in testimo- 
nials* for a professorship at King's College, for which Mr. Maurice 
had proposed him to the Council, filled up every moment of time. 
The various writers for the " Politics," including Mr. Conington, 
were continually coming to Eversley to talk over their work and 
consult "Parson Lot." 

As one qf the few survivors of those most intimately associated 
with the author of " Alton Locke," his friend, Mr. Tom Hughes, 
has written an eloquent preface to a fresh reprint of that work and 
of " Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," from which he has kindly allowed 
the following extracts to be used. Mr. Hughes, speaking of the 
distinct period of Charles Kingsley's life extending from 1848 to 
1856, says : — 

". . . My first meeting with him was in the autumn of 
1847, at the house of Mr. Maurice, who had lately been appointed 
Reader of Lincoln's Inn. No parochial work is attached to that 
post, so Mr. Maurice had undertaken the charge of a small district 
in the parish in which he lived, and had set a number of young 
men, chiefly students of the Inns of Court, who had been attracted 
by his teaching, to work in it., Once a week, on Monday evenings, 
they used to meet at his house for tea, when their own work was 
reported upon and talked over. Suggestions were made and plans 
considered ; and afterwards a chapter of the Bible was read and 
discussed. Friends and old pupils of Mr. Maurice's, residing in 
the country, or in distant parts of London, were in the habit of 
coming occasionally to these meetings, amongst whom was Charles 
Kingsley. 

" His poem,f and the high regard and admiration which Mr. 
Maurice had for him, made him a notable figure in that small 
society, and his presence was always eagerly looked for. What 
impressed me most about him when we first met was, his affection- 
ate deference to Mr. Maurice, and the vigor and incisiveness of 
everything he said and did. He had the power of cutting out what 
he meant in a few clear words, beyond any one I have ever met. 
The next thing that struck one was, the ease with which he could 
turn from playfulness, or even broad humor, to the deepest earnest. 
At first I think this startled most persons, until they came to find 

* These testimonials were chiefly based on the historic power displayed in the 
"Saint's Tragedy," and on his own high personal character, from tlie Bishop 
of his Diocese, Archdeacon Hare, and many other friends. 

\ " The Saint's Tragedy." 

7 



98 Charles Ki7igsley. 

out the real deep nature of tlie man ; and that his broadest humor 
had its root in a faith which realized, with extraordinary vividness, 
the fact that God's Spirit is actively abroad in the world, and that 
Christ is in every man, and made him hold fast, even in his saddest 
moments, — and sad moments were not infrequent with him, — the 
assurance that, in spite of all appearances, the world was going 
right, and would go right somehow, 'Not your way, or my way, but 
God's way.' The contrast of his humility and audacity, of his dis- 
trust in himself and confidence in himself, was one of those puzzles 
which meet us daily in this world of paradox. But both qualities 
gave him a peculiar power for the work he had to do at that time, 
with which the name of Parson Lot is associated. It was at one 
of these gatherings, towards the end of 1847 or early in 1848, when 
Kingsley found himself in a minority of one, that he said jokingly, 
he felt much as Lot must have felt in the Cities of the Plain, when 
he seemed as one that mocked to his sons-in-law. The name 
Parson Lot was tlien and there suggested, and adopted by him, as 
a familiar nom de plume. He used it from 1848 up to 1856 ; at 
first constantly, latterly much more rarely. But the name was 
chiefly made famous by his writings in 'Politics for the People,' 
' The Christian Socialist,' and the ' Journal of Association,' three 
periodicals which covered the years from '48 to '52 ; by 'Alton 
Locke,' and by tracts and pamphlets, of which the best known, 
' Cheap Clothes, and Nasty,' is now republished. 

" In order to understand and judge the sayings and writings of 
Parson Lot fairly, it is necessary to recall the condition of the 
England of that day. Through the winter of 1847-8, amidst wide- 
spread distress, the cloud of discontent, of which chartism was the 
most violent symptom, had been growing darker and more menac- 
ing, while Ireland was only held down by main force. The break- 
ing out of the revolution on the Continent in February increased the 
danger. In March there were riots in London, Glasgow, Edin- 
burgh, Liverpool, and other large towns. On April 7th, ' the Crown 
and Government Security Bill,' commonly called ' the Gagging Act,' 
was introduced by the Government, the first reading carried by 265 
to 24, and the second, a few days later, by 452 to 35. On the loth 
of April the Government had to fill London with troops, and put 
the Duke of Wellington in command, who barricaded the bridges 
and Downing street, garrisoned the Bank and other public buildings, 
and closed the Horse Guards. When the momentary crisis had 
passed, the old soldier declared in the House of Lords, that no 
great society had ever suffered as London had during the preceding 
days, while the Home Secretary telegraphed to all the chief mag'ls- 
trates of the kingdom the joyful news that the peace had been kept 
in London. In April, the Lord Chancellor, in introducing the 
Crown and Government Security Bill in the House of Lords, re- 
ferred to the fact, that 'meetings were daily held, not only in 



Mr. Hughes Recollections. 99 

London, but in most of the manufacturing towns, the avowed object 
of which was to array the people against the constituted authority of 
these reahns.' For months afterwards the Chartist movement, 
though i^lainly subsiding, kept the Government in constant anxiety ; 
and again in June, 1848, the Bank, the Mint, the Custom House, 
and other pubHc offices were filled with troops, and the Houses 
of Parliament were not only garrisoned but provisioned as if for a 
siege. 

" From that time, all fear of serious danger passed away. The 
Chartists were completely discouraged, and their leaders in prison ; 
and the upper and middle classes were recovering rapidly from 
the alarm which had converted a million of them into special con- 
stables, and were beginning to doubt whether the crisis had been so 
serious after all, whether the disaffection had ever been more than 
skin deep. At this juncture a series of articles appeared in the 
Morning Chronicle, on London labor and the London poor, which 
startled the well-to-do classes out of their jubilant and scornful 
attitude, and disclosed a state of things which made all fair-minded 
people wonder, not that there had been violent speaking and some 
rioting, but that the metropolis had escaped the scenes which had 
lately been enacted in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other Continental 
capitals. 

"It is only by an effort that one can now realize the strain to 
which the nation was subjected during that winter and spring, and 
which, of course, tried every individual man also, according to the 
depth and earnestness of his political and social convictions and 
sympathies. The group of men who were working under Mr. 
Maurice were no exce])tions to the rule. The work of teaching 
and visiting was not, indeed, neglected, but the larger questions 
which were being so strenuously mooted — the points of the people's 
charter, the right of public meeting, the attitude of the laboring 
class to the other classes, absorbed more and more of their atten- 
tion. Kingsley was very deeply impressed with the gravity and 
danger of the crisis — more so, I think, than almost any of his 
friends ; probably because, as a country parson, he was more 
directly in contact with one class of the poor than any of them. 
How deeply he felt for the agricultural poor, how faithfully he re- 
flected the passionate and restless sadness of the time, may be 
read in the pages of ' Yeast,' which came out later in ' Fraser.' As 
the winter months went on this sadness increased, and seriously 
affected his health."* 

On the 6th of May the first number of " Politics for the People " 
appeared. Its regular contributors were nearly all university men, 

*From Mr. Thomas Hughes's Preface to "Alton Locke," and "Cheap 
Clothes, and Nasty," by Parson Lot. 



lOO Charles Kings ley. 

clergymen of the Church of England, London barristers, men of 
science, and among them Archdeacon Hare, Sir Arthur (then Mr.) 
Helps, and a distinguished London physician, A few letters from 
workingmen, one signed " One of the wicked Chartists of Ken- 
nington Common," were readily admitted. Three papers on the 
National Gallery and British Museum, three letters to Chartists, 
some poetry, and a tale, "The Nun's Pool," which was rejected by 
the publisher as too strong, were Mr. Kingsley's only contribu- 
tions. His weekly lecture at Queen's College, with two sermons 
every Sunday, and his indefatigable parish work (he had then no 
curate), prevented his doing more for the " Politics." It was a 
remarkable though short-lived publication, and those whose 
opinions of the " Radicals, Socialists, Chartists," who set it on foot, 
were formed by the public press, without reading the book itself^ 
would be surprised at the loyal, conservative, serious tone of its 
contents, and the gravity, if not severity, with which it attacked 
physical force Chartism, monster meetings, and the demand for 
universal suffrage by men who had neither education nor moral 
self-government to qualify them for a vote. 

But to return to Mr. Hughes's Preface. "But it may be said, 
apart from his writings, did not Parson Lot declare himself a 
Chartist in a public meeting in London ; and did he not preach in 
a London pulpit a political sermon,* which brought up the incum- 
bent, who had invited him, to protest from the altar against the 
doctrine which had just been delivered ? 

"Yes ! both statements are true. Here are the facts as to the 
speech. In the early summer of 1848, some of those who felt with 
Charles Kingsley that the ' People's Charter' had not had fair play 
or courteous treatment, and that those who signed it had real wrongs 
to complain of, put themselves into communication with the lead- 
ers, and met aiid talked with them. At last it seemed that the 
time was come for some more pubhc meeting, and one was called 
at the Cranbourn Tavern, over which Mr. Maurice presided. After 
the president's address several very bitter speeches followed, and 
a vehement attack was especially directed against the Church and 
and clergy. The meeting waxed warm, and seemed likely to come 
to no good, when Kingsley arose, folded his arms across his chest, 
threw his head back, and began — with the stammer which always 
came at first when much moved, but which fixed every one's atten- 
tion at once — ' I am a Church of England Parson ' — a long i:)ause 
— 'and a Chartist;' and then he went on to explain how far he 

* This incident belongs to a later period, 1851, and will be given in its place. 



Mr. Hughes Recollections. loi 

thought them right in their claim for a reform of Parliament ; how 
deeply he sympathized with their sense of the injustice of the law as 
it affected them ; how ready he was to help in all ways to get these 
things set right ; and then to denounce their methods in very much 
the same terms as I have already quoted from his letters to the 
Chartists. Probably no one who was present ever heard a speech 
which told more at the time. I had a singular proof that the effect 
did not pass away. The most violent speaker on that occasion 
was one of the staff of the leading Chartist newspaper. I lost sight 
of him entirely for more than twenty years, and saw him again, a 
little grey shrivelled man, by Kingsley's side, at the grave of Mr. 
Maurice, in the cemetery at Hampstead. 

" The experience of this meeting encouraged its promoters to 
continue the series of Tracts, which they did with a success which 
surpiised no one more than themselves. 

" The fact is, that Charles Kingsley was born a fighting man, 
and believed in bold attack. ' No human power ever beat back a 
resolute forlorn hope,' he used to say ; ' to be got rid of, they must 
be blown back with grape and canister, because the attacking party 
have all the universe behind them, the defence only that small part 
which is shut up in their walls.' And he felt most strongly at this 
time that hard fighting was needed. ' It is a pity,' he writes to Mr. 
Ludlow, ' that telling people what's right won't make them do it ; 
but not a new fact, thougli the world has quite forgotten it, and 
assures you that the dear sweet incompris mankind only wants to 
be told the way to the millennium to walk willingly into it — which 
is a lie. 

"The memorials of his many controversies lie about in the 
periodicals of that time, and any one who cares to hunt them up 
will be well repaid, and struck with the vigor of the defence, and 
still more with the complete change in public opinion which has 
brought the England of to-day clean round to the side of Parson 
Lot. The most complete, perhaps, of his fugitive pieces of this 
kind, is the pamphlet ' Who are the Friends of Order? ' published 
by J VV. Parker & Son, in answer to a very fair and moderate arti- 
cle in ' Eraser's Magazine.' The Parson there points out how he 
and his friends were ' cursed by demagogues as aristocrats, and by 
tories as democrats, when in reality they were neither,' and urges 
that the very fact of the continent being overrun with communist 
fanatics, is the best argument for preaching association here." * 

To those who cannot look back on the political storms of 
1848-49, his contributions on the subject of Art, on the pictures in 

* Preface to " Alton Locke," by T. Hughes. 1876. 



I02 Charles Kings ley. 

the National Gallery, and on the British Museum will be more con- 
genial. This last we give entire : 

BRITISH MUSEUM. 

" My friend, Will Willow Wren is bringing before our readers the 
beauty and meaning of the Hving natural world — the great Green- 
book which holds ' the open secret,' as Goethe calls it, seen by all, 
but read by, alas ! how few. And I feel as much as he, that nature 
is infinitely more wonderful than the highest art ; and in the com- 
monest hedgeside leaf lies a mystery and beauty greater than that 
of the greatest picture, the noblest statue — as infinitely greater 
as God's work is infinitely greater than man's. But to those who 
have no leisure to study nature in the green fields (and there are 
now-a-days too many such, though the time may come when all will 
have that blessing), to such I say, go to the British Musem ; there 
at least, if you cannot go to nature's wonders, some of nature's 
wonders are brought to you. 

"The British Museum is my glory and joy ; because it is almost 
the only place which is free to English citizens as such — where the 
poor and the rich may meet together, and before those works of 
God's spirit, 'who is no respecter of persons,' feel that 'the Lord 
is the maker of them all.' In the British Museum and the Na- 
tional Gallery alone the Englishman may say, ' Whatever my coat 
or my purse, I am an Englishman, and therefore I have a right 
here. 1 can glory in these noble halls, as if they were my own 
house.' 

"English commerce, the joint enterprise and industry of the 
poor sailor as well as the rich merchant, brought home these treas- 
ures from foreign lands, and those glorious statues — though it was 
the wealth and taste of English noblemen and gentlemen (who in 
that proved themselves truly noble and gentle) which placed them 
here, yet it was the genius of English artists — men at once above 
and below all ranks^ — ^men who have worked their way up, not by 
money or birth, but by worth and genius, which taught the noble 
and wealthy the value of those antiques, and which proclaimed 
their beauty to the world. The British Museum is a truly equaliz- 
ing place, in the deepest and most spiritual sense ; therefore I 
love it. 

" And it gives the lie, too, to that common slander, ' that the 
English are not worthy of free admission to valuable and curious 
collections, because they have such a trick of seeing with their fin- 
gers ; such a trick of scribbling their names, of defiling and disfigur- 
ing works of art. On the Continent it may do, but you cannot 
trust the English.' 

" This has been, like many other untruths, so often repeated, 
that people now take it for granted ; but I believe that it is utterly 



Paper on the British Museum. 103 

groundless, and I say so on the experience of the British Museum 
and the National Gallery. In the only two cases, I believe, in 
which injury has been done to anything in either place, the de- 
stroyers were neither artisans, nor even poor reckless heathen 
street-boys, but persons who had received what is too often mis- 
called ' a liberal education.' The truth is, that where people pay 
their money (as they do in some great houses) for the empty pleas- 
ure of staring at luxuries which they cannot enjoy, vulgar curiosity 
too often ends in jealous spite ; and where people consider them- 
selves unjustly excluded from works of art, which ought, as far as 
possible, to be made as free as the common air, mean minds will 
sometin;ies avenge their fancied wrongs by doing wrong themselves. 
But national property will always be respected, because all will be 
content, while they feel that they have their rights, and all will be 
careful while they feel that they have a share in the treasure. 

" "Would that the rich, who, not from selfishness so much as from 
thoughtlessness, lock up the splendid collections from the eyes of 
all but a favored few, would go to the British Museum in Easter 
week ! Would that the Deans and Chapters, who persist (in spite 
of the struggles of many of their own body) in making penny-peep- 
shows of God's houses, built by public piety and benevolence — of 
St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, which belongs not to them at 
all, but to God and the people of England, would go to the British 
Museum in Easter week and see there hundreds of thousands, of 
every rank and age, wandering past sculptures and paintings, 
which would be ruined by a blow — past jewels and curiosities, any 
one of which would buy many a poor soul there a month's food and 
lodging — only protected by a pane of glass, if by that ; and then 
see not a thing disfigured— much less stolen. Everywhere order, 
care, attention, honest pride in their country's wealth and science; 
earnest reverence for the mighty works of God, and of the God- 
insjnred. 1 say, the people of England prove themselves worthy 
of free admission to all works of art, and it is therefore the duty of 
those who can to help them to that free admission. 

" What a noble, and righteous, and truly brotherly plan it would 
be, if all classes would join to form a free National Gallery of Art 
and Science, which might combine the advantages of the present 
Polytechnic, Society of Arts, and British Institution, gratis. Manu- 
facturers and men of science might send thither specimens of their 
new inventions. The rich might send, for a few months in the 
year — as they do now to the British Institution — ancient and 
modern pictures, and not only pictures, but all sorts of curious 

works of art and nature, which are now hidden in their drawingf- 
.... o 

rooms and libraries. There might be free liberty to copy any ob- 
ject, on the copyist's name and residence being registered. And 
surely artists and men of science might be found, with enough of 
the spirit of patriotism and love, to explain gratuitously to all com- 



I04 Charles Kiiigsley. 

ers, whatever their rank or dass, the wonders of the Museum. I 
really believe that if once the spirit of brotherhood got abroad 
among us ; if men once saw that here was a vast means of educat- 
ing, and softening and uniting those who have no leisure to study, 
and few means of enjoyment, except the gin-shop and Cremorne 
Gardens } if they could but once feel that here was a project, 
equally blessed for rich and poor, the money for it would be at 
once forthcoming from many a rich man, who is longing to do good, 
if he could only be shown the way ; and from many a poor jour- 
neyman, who would gladly contribute his mite to a truly national 
museum, founded on the principles of spiritual liberty, equality and 
fraternity. All that is wanted is the spirit of self-sacrifice, patriot- 
ism and brotherly love — which God alone can give — which 1 be- 
lieve He is giving more and more in these very days. 

" I never felt this more strongly than some six months ago, as I 
was looking in at the windows of a splendid curiosity-shop in 
Oxford Street, at a case of humming-birds. I was gloating over 
the beauty of those feathered jewels, and then wondering what was 
the meaning, what was the use of it all ? — why those exquisite 
little creatures should have been hidden for ages, in all their splen- 
dors of ruby and emerald and gold, in the South American forests, 
breeding and fluttering and dying, that some dozen out of all those 
millions might be brought over here to astonish the eyes of men. 
And as I asked myself, why were all these boundless varieties, 
these treasures of unseen beauty, created ? my brain grew dizzy 
between pleasure and thought ; and, as always happens when one 
is most innocently delighted, ' I turned to share the joy,' as 
Wordsworth says ; and next to me stood a huge, brawny coal- 
heaver, in his shovel hat, and white stockings and high-lows, gazing 
at the humming-birds as earnestly as myself. As I turned he 
turned, and 1 saw a bright manly face, with a broad, soot grimed 
forehead, from under which a pair of keen flashing eyes gleamed 
wondering, smiling sympathy into mine. In that moment we felt 
ourselves friends. If we had been P'renchmen, we should, 1 sup- 
pose, have rushed into each other's arms and 'fraternised' upon 
the spot. As we "were a pair of dumb, awkward Englishmen, we 
only gazed a half-minute, staring into each other's eyes, with a 
delightful feeling of understanding each other, and then burst out 
both at once with — ' Isn't that beautiful ? ' ' Well, that is ! ' And 
then both turned back again, to stare at our humming-birds. 

" I never felt more thoroughly than at that minute (though, 
thank God, I had often felt it before) that all men were brothers ; 
that fraternity and equality were not mere political doctrines, but 
blessed God-ordained facts ; that the party-walls of rank and 
fashion and money were but a paper prison of our own making, 
which we might break through any moment by a single hearty and 
kindly feeling ; that the one spirit of God was given without 



Devotion to Duty. 105 

respect of persons ; that the beautiful tilings were beautiful alike 
to the coal-heaver and the parson ; and that before the wondrous 
works of God and of God's inspired genius, the rich and the poor 
might meet together, and feel that whatever the coat or the creed 
may be, ' A man's a man for a' that,' and one Lord the maker of 
them all. 

" For believe me, my friends, rich and poor — and I beseech you 
to think deeply over this great truth — that men will never be. 
joined in true brotherhood by mere plans to give them a self-inter- 
est in common, as the Socialists have tried to do. No ; to feel 
for each other, they must first feel with each other. To have 
their sympathies in common, they must have not one object of 
gain, but an object of admiration in common ; to know that they 
are brothers, they must feel that they have one Father ; and a way 
to feel that they have one common Father, is to see each other 
wondering, side by side, at His glorious works ! . 

" Parson Lot." 

He had a sore battle to go through at this time with his own 
heart, and with those friends and relations, religious and worldly, 
who each and all from their own particular standpoint deprecated 
the line he took, and urged him to withdraw from this sympathy 
with the people, which was likely to spoil his prospects in life. In 
reference to this he writes to his wife : — 

*' . . . 1 will not be a liar. I will speak in season and out 
of season. I will not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. 
I will not take counsel with flesh and blood, and flatter myself 
into the dream that while every man on earth, from Maurice back 
to Abel, who ever tried to testify against the world, has been 
laughed at, misunderstood, slandered, and that, bitterest of all, by 
the very people he loved best, and understood best, I alone am to 
escape. My path is clear, and I will follow in it. He who died 
for me, and who gave me you, shall I not trust Hina through what- 
soever new and strange paths He may lead me ?...." 

TO MR. LUDLOW. 

EVERSLEY, July^ 1848. 

" 1 should have answered yesterday your noble and kind letter, 
had not my afternoon been employed in forcing a cruel, lazy farmer 
to shoot a miserable horse which was rotting alive in front of my 
house, and superintending its death by aid of one of my own 
bullets. What an awful wonderful thing a violent death is, even in 
a dumb beast ! 1 would not have lost the sight for a great deal. 
But now to business. You take a strange way to frighten a man otf 
from novel-writing, by telling a man that he may become the greatest 



io6 Charles Kings ley. 

novelist of the age. If your good opinion of me was true, I should 
have less fear for myself, for a man could not become that in this 
wonderful era, without having ideas and longings which would force 
him to become something far better than a novelist ; but for myself, 
chaotic, piecemeal, passionate, 'lachemar' as I am, I have fears as 
great as your own. I know the miserable, peevish, lazy, conceited, 
faithless, prayerless wretch I am, but I know this, too, that One is 
guiding me, and driving me when I will not be guided, who will 
make me, and has made me go His way and do His work, by fair 
means or by foul. He set me on writing this 'novel.' He has' 
taught me things about the hep,rt of fast sporting men, and about 
the condition of the poor, and our duty to them, which I have no 
doubt He has taught many more, but He has not set any one else 
to speak about them in the way in which I am speaking. He has 
given me a certain artistic knack of utterance (nothing but a 
knack), but He has done more. He has made the ' Word of the 
Lord like tire within my bones,' giving me no peace till I have 
spoken out. I know I may seem presumptuous — to myself most 
of all, because I know best the ' liar to my own idea ' which I am. 
I know that He has made me a parish priest, and that that is the 
duty which lies nearest me, and that I may seem to be leaving my 
calling in novel-writing. But has He not taught me all these very 
things by my parish-priest Hfe ? Did He, too, let me become a 
strong, daring, sporting wild-man-of the- woods for nothing ? Surely 
the education which He has given me, so different from that which 
authors generally receive, points out to me a peculiar calling to 
preach on these points, from my own experience, as it did to good 
old Isaac Walton, as it has done in our day to that truly noble 
man, Captain Marryat. Therefore I must believe ' Se tu segui la 
tua Stella ' with Dante, that He who ordained my star will not lead 
me into temptation, but through it, as Maurice says. Without 
Him all places and methods of life are equally dangerous — with 
Him, all equally safe. Pray for me, for in myself I am weaker 
of purpose than a lost greyhound, lazier than a dog in rainy 
weather. 

•'But I feel intensely the weight of your advice to write no more 
novels. Why should I ? I have no more to say. When this is 
done I must set to and read. The symbolism of nature and the 
meaning of history must be my studies. Believe me I long for 
that day — the pangs of intellectual labor, the burden of spiritual 
pregnancy, are not pleasant things. A man cannot write in the 
fear of God without running against the devil at every step. He 
cannot sit down to speak the truth without disturbing in his own 
soul a hornet swarm of lies. Your hack-writer of no creed, your 
bigot Polyphemus, whose one eye just helps him to see to eat men, 
they do not understand this ; their pens run on joyful and light of 
heart. But no more talk about myself. 



Letter to his Datighter. 107 

" Read a poem written by an acquaintance of mine, Clough of 
Oxford, ' The Bothie of Toper-na-Voirlich,' and tell me if you do 
not think it a noble specimen of Pantagruelism, and a hopeful sign 
for ' Young Oxford,' of which he is one of the leaders " 

Having been appointed Professor of English Literature at 
Queen's College, Harley Street, he gave his first introductory lecture 
on May 13th, and continued lecturing weekly. 

In the summer he made an expedition with Mr. Maurice to 
Crowland Abbey, near Peterborough, which deeply impressed him 
at the time, and formed one of the strong features in his story of 
" Hereward " at a later date. " We spent there a priceless day," 
he says; "these days with Maurice have taught me more than I 
can tell. Like all great things, he grows upon one more and 
more." He wrote several letters to his little daughter at this time;, 
full of poetry and natural history, of which one is given. 

TO HIS LITTLE GIRL ROSE. 

DuxFORD, Cambridge. 

"My dear Miss Rose, 

" I am writing in such a curious place. A mill where they 
grind corn and bones, and such a funny little room in it full of 
stuffed birds. And there is a flamingo, such a funny red bird, with 
long legs and a long neck, as big as Miss Rose, and sharks' jaws, 
and an armadillo all over great scales, and now I will tell you about 
the stork. He is called Peter, and here is a picture of him. See 
what long legs he has, and a white body and black wings, and he 
catches all the frogs and snails, and eats them, and when he is 
cross, he opens his long bill, and makes such a horrible clattering 
like a rattle. And he comes to the window at tea time, to eat 
bread and butter, and he is so greedy, and he gobbled down a great 
pinch of snuff out of Daddy's box, and he was so sick, and we all 
laughed at him, for bemg so foolish and greedy. And do you know 
there are such curious frogs here that people eat, and there were 
never any found in England before Mr. Thurnall found them, and 
he sent them to the British Museum and the wise men were so 
pleased, and sent him leave to go to the British Museum and see 
all the wonderful things whenever he liked. And he has got such 
beautiful butterflies in boxes, and whole cupboards full of birds' eggs, 
a.nd a river full of beautiful fish, and Daddy went fishing yesterday, 
and caught an immense trout, very nearly four pounds weigh tj and 
he raged and ran about in the river so long, and Daddy was quite 
tired before he could get him out. And to-day Daddy is going 
back to Cambridge to get a letter from his dear home. And do 
you know when Mr. Thurnall saw me drawing the stork, he gave 



io8 Charles Kingsley. 

me a real live stork of my own to bring home to Miss Rose, and we 
will put him in the kitchen garden to run about — what fun ! And 
to-morrow Daddy is going to see the beautiful pictures at the Fitz- 
william Museum, and the next day he is goin'g to fish at Shelford, 
and the next day, perhaps, he is coming home to his darlings at 
Eversley Rectory, for he does not know what to do without them. 
. . . . How haj^py Miss Rose must be with her dear mother. 
She must say, ' thank God for giving me such a darling mother ! ' 

"Kiss her for me and Maurice, and now good-bye, and I will 
bring home the stork. 

" Your own Daddy." 

His acquaintance with Mr. Thomas Cooper, Chartist, was made 
this year, and out of it grew a long correspondence, of which this 
is the first letter. The rest will come at a later period. 

Eversley, June \^, 1848. 

" Ever since I read your brilliant poem, ' The Purgatory of Sui- 
cides,' and its most affecting preface, I have been possessed by a 
desire to thrust myself, at all risks, into your acquaintance. The 
risk which I felt keenly, was the fear that you might distrust me, 
as a clergyman ; having, I am afraid, no great reason to love that 
body of men. Still, I thought, the poetic spu'it ought to be a bond 
of communion between us. Shall God make us brother poets, as 
well as brother, men, and we refuse to fraternise ? I thought also 
that you, if you have a poet's heart, as well as the poet's brain 
which you have manifested, ought to be more able than other men 
to appreciate and sympathise with my feelings towards ' the work- 
ing classes.' 

"You can understand why I held back — from shame — a false 
shame, perhaps, lest you should fancy me a hypocrite. But my 
mind was made up when 1 found an attack in the 'Common- 
wealth,' on certain papers which I had published in the 'Politics 
of the People,' under the name of Parson Lot. Now I had hailed 
with cordial pleasure the appearance of the ' Commonwealth,' and 
sympathised thoroughly with it — and here was this very ' Coiiimon- 
weakh ' attacking me on some of the very points on which I most 
agreed with it. It seemed to me intolerable to be so misunder- 
stood. It had been long intolerable to me, to be regarded as an 
object of distrust and aversion by thousands of my countrymen, 
my equals in privilege, and too often, alas ! far my superiors in 
worth, just because I was a clergyman, the very office which ought 
to have testified above all others, for liberty, equality, brotherhood, 
for time and eternity, I felt myself bound, then, to write to you, 
to see if among the nobler spirits of the working classes I could 
not make one friend who would understand me. My ancestors 



Prostration. 109 

fought in Cromwell's army, and left all for the sake of God and 
liberty, among the ])ilgrim fathers, and here were men accusing me 
of 'medieval tyranny.' I would shed the last drop of my life 
blood for the social and political emancipation of the people of 
England, as God is my witness \ and here are the very men for 
whom I would die, fancying me an 'aristocrat.' It is not enough 
for me that they are mistaken in me. I want to work with them. 
I want to realize my brotherhood with them. I want some one 
like yourself, intimately acquainted with the mind of the working 
classes, to give me such an insight into their life and thoughts, as 
may enable me to consecrate my powers effectually to their ser- 
vice. For them I have lived for several years. 1 come to you to 
ask you if you can tell me how to live more completely for them. 
If you distrust and reject my overtures, I shall not be astonished — 
pained I shall be — and you must know as well as I, that there is 
no bitterer pain than to be called a rogue because you are honester 
than your neighbors, and a time-server, because you have intellect 
enough to see both sides of a question." 

In the autumn he quite broke down, while writing " Yeast," as 
a series of papers in " Eraser's Magazine." He had not recovered 
the excitement of the Chartist movement, and having at that time 
no curate, every hour was occupied with sermon writing, cottage 
visiting, and he was forced to write "Yeast" at night when the 
day's work was over, and the house still. This was too much for 
brain and nerves, and one Sunday evening, after his two services 
had been got through with difficulty, he fell asleep, slept late into 
the next day, and awoke so exhausted that his medical man was 
alarmed at his weakness, ordered complete rest and change to 
Bournemouth. From thence, after a month's rest, he returned to 
Eversley only to sink again. 

rO AN OXFORD FRIEND. 

Eversley, December, 1848. 

" I have delayed answering your letter because I did not wish 
to speak in a hurry on a subject so important to you. I am afraid 

that 's report of my opinion has pained you — really it ought not : 

I spoke only as a friend and in sincerity. I cannot advise you to 
publish the poems of yours wliich I have seen — at least for some 
years, and I will give you my reasons 

" First, you write too easily ; that same imp 'facility' must not 
be let to ruin you, as it helped to ruin Theodore Hook. You 
must never put two words or lines where one will do ; the age is 
too busy and hurried to stand it. Again, you want to see a great 



I i,o Charles Kijtgsley. 

deal more, and study more — that is the only way to have materi- 
als. Poets cannot create till they have learnt to recombine. The 
study of man and nature ; the study of poets and fiction writers of 
all schools is necessary. And, believe me, you can never write 
like Byron, or anybody else worth hearing, unless by reading and 
using poetry of a very different school from his. The early dramat- 
ists, Shakespeare above all ; and not less the two schools which made 
Shakespeare ; the Northern ballad literature ; nay even, T find the 
Norse myths. And, on the other hand, the Romance literature 
must be known, to acquire that objective power of embodying 
thoughts, without which poetry degenerates into the mere intellec- 
tual reflective, and thence into the metrical-prose didactic. Read, 
mark, and learn, and do not write. I never wrote five hundred 
lines in my life before the 'Saint's Tragedy,' but from my childhood 
I had worked at poetry from Southey's ' Thalaba,' Ariosto, Spen- 
ser, and the ' Old Ballads,' through almost every school, classic 
and modern, except the Spanish, and, alas ! a very little German, 
and that by translations. And I have not read half enough. I 
have been studying all ]5hysical sciences which deal with phe- 
nomena ; I have been watching nature in every mood ; I have 
been poring over sculptures and paintings since I was a little boy 
— and all I can say is, I do not know half enough to be a poet in 
the nineteenth century, and have cut the Muse/?'^ tempore. 

" Again, you have an infinity to learn about rhythm and metre, 
and about the coloring and chiaroscuro of poetry ; how to break 
up your masses, and how to make masses ; high lights and shad- 
ows; major and minor keys of metre ; rich coloring alternating 
with delicate. All these things have to be learnt, if you wisli to 
avoid monotony, to arrest the interest, to gain the cardinal secret 
of giving ' continual surprise in expectation,' and ' expectation in 
surprise.' 

"Now don't be angry with me. I think you have a poetic 
faculty in you, from the mere fact of your having been always 
lusting to get your thoughts into poetry ; and because I think 
you have one, therefore I don't want you to publish, or even 
write, till you have learnt enough really to enable you to embody 
your thoughts. They are good and vigorous, and profitable to 
the age ; but they are as yet too bare-backed — you must go clothes- 
hunting for the poor naked babbies. 

Let me hear from you again, for I am very much interested in 
all you do, and your true friend and well wisher." 

After a second prostration of strength, he was advised to give 
up all work entirely, and the winter and spring were spent in 
North Devon, at llfracombe and Lynmouth. 



CHx\PTER VIII. 



Aged 30. 

Winter in Devonshire — Ilfracombe — Decides on taking Pupils — Correspondence^ 
Visit to London — Social Questions — Fever at Eversley — Renewed Illness — • 
Returns to Devonshire — Cholera in England — Sanitary Work — Bermondsey 
—Letter from Mr. C. K. Paul. 

This year began in ill-health at Ilfracombe, where Mr. Maurice 
with other friends came to visit him, and went away depressed at 
seeing the utter exhaustion, mental and bodily, of one who had been 
the life and soul of their band of workers in 1848. He was able to 
do nothing for months — riding, walking, and even conversation were 
too much for him ; and wandering on the sea-shore, collecting shells 
and zoophytes, with his wife and children, was all the exertion 
. that he could bear, while dreaming over " The Autobiography of a 
Cockney Poet," which in the autumn was to develop into " Alton 
Locke." With much difficulty he got through an article on Mrs. 
Jamieson's Sacred and Legendary Art " for " Fraser's Magazine," 
which he had promised.* Mr. Froude came to him from Oxford in 
P'ebruary, and then and there made acquaintance with his future 
wife, IVErs. Kingsley's sister, who was also at Ilfracombe. There 
are few letters to mark the Avinter and spring of 1849, ^"^ fewer 
poems. 

During a solitary ride on Morte Sands, he composed some 
elegiacs, of which he speaks in the following letter : 

TO J. MALCOLM LUDLOW, ESQ. 

Ilfracombe, February^ 1849. 

". . . . I send you the enclosed lines as some proof that 

the exquisite elegiac metre suits our English language (as indeed 

everything beautiful does). They are but a fragment. You were 

the cause of their not being finished ; for your kindness swept away 

* Since published in his Miscellanies. 



112 Charles Kings ley. 

the evil spirit of despondency, and I hold it a sin to turn on the 
Werterian tap, of malice prepense. If they are worth finishing, I 
shall have sorrows enough ere I die, no doubt, to put nie in the 
proper vein for them again. I send them off to escape the torn)ent 
of continually fidgeting and polishing at them ; for whatever I may 
say in defence of my own case, I dare not let anything go forth, 
except as highly finished as I can make it. Show them to the 'oak 
of the mountain,' the Master (Mr. Maurice), he will recognize the 
place, and the feeling of much of them, and ask him whether, 
with a palinode, setting forth how out of winter must come spring, 
out of death life, they would not be tolerably true 

Wearily stretches the land to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland ; 

Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone. 

Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, kv&u yaiuv, 

Joyous knight errant of God, thirsting for labor and strife. 

No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether, 

But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold. 

Fruit-bearing autumn is gone ; let the sad, quiet winter hang o'er me — 

What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame? 

Blossoms would fret me with beauty ; my heart has no time to be -praise them ; 

Grey rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within. 

Sing not, thou skylark above ! Even angels pass hushed by the weeper. 

Scream on, ye sea fowl ! my heart echoes your desolate cry. 

Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o'er the shell and the sea-weed ;' 

Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide. 

Just is the wave which uptore us ; 'tis Nature's own law which condemns us ; 

Woe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the sand ! 

Joy to the oak of the mountain ; he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts; 

Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone. 



" .... I have hope also of the book which I am writing, 
the Autobiography of a Cockney Poet, which has revealed itself to 
me so rapidly and methodically, that I feel it comes down from 
above, and that only my folly can spoil it — which I pray against 
daily. ^ 

" .... I never felt the reality and blessing of that church 
confession and absolution more than 1 did in this morning's ser- 
vice. Thank you for all and every hint 

"Tell Charles Mansfield I have found to-day another huge 
comatula, and bottled him with his legs, by great dodging. I am 
always finding something fresh 

" Best love to all our'friends. Poor Mam-ice ! But a little per- 
secution is a blessing to any man. Still it does make one sick to 
hear these quill-driving cowards and bigots attacking him." 



Taking Pupils. 113 

The expenses of illness, and his inability to meet them by writing, 
obliged him now to think of some other means, and he consulted 
Mr. Maurice about taking pupils. Mr. Maurice wrote at once to 
Professor Thompson, now Master of Trinity, Cambridge : 

'^ Kingsley, who, 1 think, is known to you, has been disabled for 
some time, and has been obliged to leave his living. He is much 
better, and wishes very much for a pupil to prepare for orders or 
even for college. He is now at Ilfracombe. At Eversley he would 
have accommodation in a very pleasant house. I do not know a 
man more fitted for the work — scarcely any one equally fitted. He is 
a good, accurate, and enthusiastic scholar, full of knowledge of all 
things about him, and delight in them ; and more likely to give a 
young man of the day a good direction in divinity, meeting his 
difiiculties and dealing honestly with them, than any person I have 
fallen in with. His conversation is full of interest even when he is 
ill ; when he is well he is the freshest, freest hearted man in England, 

. . . His home is altogether most pleasant, and those who 
dwell in it. \i you can give him help, I shall be most grateful to 
you. 

^ " Yours ever truly, 

" F. D. Maurice." 

He gives his own plan of teaching, or rather training a pupil, in 
a characteristic letter to Mrs. Scott, wife of Rev. A. J. Scott, after- 
wards Principal of Owens College, Manchester : 

" Will you excuse my burdening you with another word about 
pupils ?....! am not going to talk of what I can teach ; 
but what I should try to teach, would be principally physical 
sciencf, history, English literature, and modern languages. In my 
eyes the question is not what to teach, but how to educate ; how 
to train not scholars, but men ; bold, energetic, methodic, liberal- 
minded, magnanimous. If 1 can succeed in doing that, I shall do 
what no salary can repay — and what is not generally done, or ex- 
pected to be done, by private tutors " 

On the receipt of this letter, Mr. Scott remarked, "That is what 
is wanted, and it is what Charles Kingsley will do." Notwith- 
standing the efforts of his friends, the pupils were not forthcoming. 
His writings had caused a strong prejudice against him ; and it was 
not till the following year that he succeeded. The long waiting 
was repaid when the pupil came, and the labor, which throughout 
was a labor of love, was more than repaid, being spent on one who 



114 Charles Kings ley. 

realised the tutor's ideal in after life. That pupil will speak for him- 
self in another chapter. 

It had been a great sorrow to him to give up his work at Queen's 
College, and he was never able to resume it. Besides two intro- 
ductory lectures on literature and composition, instinct with genius, 
now out of print, he only delivered one course on Early English 
Literature. The Rev. Alfred Strettell took his place. 

From Clovelly, where he went with his wife's sister and Mr. 
Froude, he writes home : 

"Only a few lines, for the post starts before breakfast. We got 
here all safe. C. enjoyed herself by lying in misery at the bottom 
of the boat all the way. ... 1 cannot believe my eyes : the 
same place, the pavement, the same dear old smells, die dear old 
handsome loving faces again. It is as if I was a little boy again, 
or the place had stood still while all the world had been rushing 
and rumbling on past it; and then I suddenly recollect your face, 
and those two ducks on the pier ; and it is no dream ; this is the 
dream, and I am your husband ; what have I not to thank God 
for? I have been thanking Him; but where can I stop? We 
talk of sailing home again, as cheapest and pleasantest ; most 
probably Friday or Saturday. To-day I lionize Charlotte over 
everything. Kiss the children for me." 

The following letter, addressed to a young man going over to 
Rome, though incomplete, is too valuable to omit. Several pages 
have been lost, which will account for any want of sequence. 

Harley House, Clifton, May ii, 1849. 
"My Dear Sir, — 

"I have just heard from Charles Mansfield, to my inexpressi- 
ble grief, that you are inclined to join the Roman Communion ; 
and at the risk of being called impertinent, I cannot but write my 
whole heart to you. 

" What I say may be ixapa rov XoyoV, after all ; if so, pray write 
and let me know what your real reasons are for such a step. I 
think, as one Christian man writing to another, I may dare to en- 
treat this of you. For believe me I am no bigot. I shall not 
trouble )'0U with denunciations about the 'scarlet woman' or the 
' little horn.' I cannot but regard with awe, at least, if not rever- 
ence, a form of faith which God thinks good enough still for one 
half (though it be the more brutal, profligate, and hel])less half) of 
Europe. Believe me, I can sympathise with you. I have been 
through it ; I have longed for Rome, and boldly faced the conse- 



The Church of Rome. 115 

quences of joining Rome ; and though I now have, thank God, 
cast all wish of change behind me )'ears ago, as a great lying devil's 
temptation, yet I still long as ardently as ever to see in the Church 
of England much which only now exists, alas ! in the Church of 
Rome. Can I not feel for you ? Do I not long for a visible, one, 
organized Church ? Do 1 not shudder at the ghastly dulness of 
our services ? Do I not pray that I may see the day when the 
art and poetry of the nineteenth century shall be again among us, 
turned to their only true destination — the worship of God ? Have 
I shed no bitter, bitter tears of shame and indignation in cathedral 
aisles, and ruined abbeys, and groaned aloud 'Ichabod, Ichabod, 
the glory is departed,' etc." 

[Here some pages are lost.] 

" Can you not commit the saving of your soul to Him that made 
your soul ? I think it will be in good keeping, unless you take it 
out of His hands, by running off where he has not put you. Did 
you never read how ' He that saveth his soul shall lose it.' Be- 
ware. 

" Had you been born an Italian Romanist I would have said to 
you. Don't leave Rome; stay where you are and try to mend the 
Church of your fathers ; if it casts you out, the sin be on its own 
head ; and so I say to you. Do you want to know God's will 
about you ? What plainer signs of it, than the fact that he has 
made you, and educated you as a Protestant Englishman. Here, 
believe it — believe the providentiani, ' Dei in rebus revelatam.' — 
Here He intends you to work, and to do the dut}*- which lies near- 
est. Hold what doctrines you will, but do not take yourself out 
of communion with your countrymen, to bind yourself to a sys- 
tem which is utterly foreign to us and our thoughts, and only by 
casting off which, have we risen to be the most mighty, and, with all 
our sins, perhaps the most righteous and pure of nations (a fact 
which the Jesuits do not deny). I assure you that they tell their 
converts that the reason why Protestant England is allowed to be 
so much more righteous than the Romish nations is — to try the 
faith of the elect ! ! You will surely be above listening to such 
anile sophistry ! 

"But still, you think, ' yoti may be holier there than here.' 
Ah, sir, ' coelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt.' 
Ultramontanism will be a new system ; but not, I think, a new 
character. Certain outward acts, and certain inward feelings, 
which are all very nice, and right, and pleasant, will be made easier 
for you there than here : you will live so charmingly by rule and 
measure ; not a moment in the day but will be allotted out for you, 
with its appropriate acts of devotion. True, now you are a man, 
standing face to face with God ; then you will (believe one who 
knows) find yourself a machine, face to face, not with God, but 
with a priest and a system, and hosts of inferior deities, of which 



Ti6 Charles Kings ley. 

hereafter. Oh ! sir, you, a free-born Englishman, brought up in 
that hberty for which your forefathers died on scaffolds and in bat- 
tle-fields — that liberty which begot a Shakspeare, a Raleigh, a Ba- 
con, Milton, Newton, Faraday, Brooke — will you barter away that 
inestimable gift because Italian pedants, who know nothing of 
human nature but from the books of prurient celibates, tell you that 
they have got a surer 'dodge ' for saving your soul than those have, 
among whom God's will, not your own, has begotten and educated 
you ? But you ' will be able to rise to a greater holiness there.' 
Holiness, sir? Devoutness, you mean. The 'will of God' is 
your holiness already, and you may trust Him to perfect His will 
in you here — for here He has i)ut you — if by holiness you mean 
godliness and manliness, justice and mercy, honesty and usefulness. 
But if by holiness you mean ' saintliness,' I quite agree that Rome 
is the place to get that, and a poor pitiful thing it is when it is got 
— not God's ideal of a man, but an effeminate shaveling's ideal. 
Look at St. Francis de Sales, or St. Vincent de Paul's face, and then 
say, does not your English spirit loathe to see that? God made 
man in His image, not in an imaginary Virgin Mary's image. And 
do not fancy that you will really get any spiritual gain by going 
over. The very devotional system which will educe and develop 
the souls of people born and bred up under it, and cast, constitu- 
tionally and by hereditary associations, into its mould, will only 
prove a dead leaden crushing weight on an Englishman, who has, 
as you have, tasted from his boyhood the liberty of the Spirit of 
God. You will wake, my dear brother, you vvill wake, not alto- 
gether, but just enough to find yourself not believing in Romish 
doctrines about saints and virgins, absolutions and indulgences, 
but only believing in believing them — an awful and infinite differ- 
ence, on which I beseech you earnestly to meditate. You will 
find yourself crushing the voice of conscience, common-sense, and 
humanity — I mean the voice of God within you, in order to swal- 
low down things at which your gorge rises in disgust. You will 
find the Romish practice as different from the Romish ideal as the 
English is from the English ideal, and you will find amid all your 
discontents and doubts, that the habits of religious excitement, 
and of leaning on priests whom you will neither revere nor trust 
for themselves, will have enchained you like the habits of a drunk- 
ard or an opium-eater, so that you must go back again and again 
for self-forgetfulness to the spiritual laudanum-bottle, which gives 
now no more pleasant dreams, but only painful heartache, and 
miserable depression afterwards. I know what I have seen and 
heard from eye-witnesses. 

" 1 know you may answer — This may be all very fine, but if 
Rome be the only true Church, thither I must go, loss or gain. 
Most true. But take care how you get at this conviction that Rome 
is the true Church ; if by a process of the logical understanding, 



The Cliarticts, 1 1 7 

that is most unfair, for you have to renounce the conchisions of 
the understanding when you go to Rome. How tlien can you let 
it lead you, to a system which asserts in limiiie that it has no right 
to lead you any where at all ? 

" But I must defer this question, and also that of Romish 
cesthetics, to another letter. I make no apology for plain speak- 
ing ; these are times in which we must be open with each other. 
And I was greatly attracted by the little I saw of you. I know 
there is a sympathy between us ; and having passed through these 
temptations in my own person, God would judge me if I did not 
speak what He has revealed to me in bitter struggles. One word 
more. Pray, answer this, and pray wait. Never take so impor- 
tant a step without at least six months' deliberate waiting, not till, 
but after your mind is made up. Five-and twenty years God has 
let you remain a Protestant. Even if you were wrong in being 
one, He will surely pardon your remaining one six months longer, 
in a world where the roads of error are so many and broad that a 
man may need to look hard to find the narrow way. 

Before resuming work again at Eversley, he went to London, 
and took up the old thread by attending a Chartist meeting on the 
3d of June, and on the 19th a workmen's meeting on the Land 
Colonization question, and from Chelsea he writes home : 

" .... I could not write yesterday, being kept by a poor 
boy who had fallen off a truck at Croydon and smashed himself, 
whom I escorted to Gu)-'s Hospital. 1 have spent the whole day 
running up and down London on business. I breakfasted with 
Bunsen, such a divine-looking man, and so kind. I have worlds 
to tell you. Met F. Newman last night, and breakfast with him 
to-morrow. I had a long and interesting talk with Froude last 
night 

'' Monday. — I spent yesterday with Ludlow, and went with him 
to Dr. Thorpe's, and to Lincoln' s-inn Chapel in the afternoon — a 
noble sight. ^Maurice's head looked like some great, awful Gior- 
gione portrait in the pulpit, but oh, so worn, and the face worked 
so at certain passages of the sermon. 

" Long and most interesting talk with Mons. Chevallier this 
morning. London is perfectly horrible. To you alone I look for 
help and advice — God and you, — else I think at times I should 

cry myself to death The women's shoe-makers are not 

set up yet. My sermons (' Village Sermons') are being lent from 
man to man, among the South London Chartists, at such a pace 
that Cooper can't get them back again. And the Manchester 
men stole his copy of the Saint's Tragedy 



Ii8 Charles Kingsley. 

" I have just been to see Carlyle." 

(Later) " On Friday I dined at Maurice's. Met Mrs. Augustus 
Hare, and a brother of the Archdeacon's, an officer in the Prussian 
army, also Mr. and Mrs. Scott, who were very kind indeed. I 
took George to a soiree at Parker's, and introduced him to all the 
set there. On Saturday we dined at Ludlow's, met dear Charles 
Mansfield and a Frenchman, now being tried in Paris for the June 
Row, a complete Red Republican and Fourierist ; he says nothing 
but Christianity can save France or the world. I had an intensely 
interesting talk with him. In the evening the Campbells, Shorter 
the Chartist, and Dr. Walsh, came in^ and we had a glorious 
evening. . . . ." 

Jtine 12, 1849 (^y Birthday). 

" Last night will never be forgotten by many, many men. 
Maurice was — I cannot describe it. Chartists told me this morn- 
ing that many were affected even to tears. The man was inspired 
— gigantic. No one commented on what he said. He stunned 
lis ! I will tell you all when I can collect myself. .... 

" This morning I breakfasted with Dr. Guy, and went with him 

Tailor hunting, very satisfactory as yet Yesterday 

afternoon with Professor Owen at the College of Surgeons, where I 
saw unspeakable things " 



He now settled at Eversley again, and threw himself into the 
full tide of parish work with the loving help of the Rev. H. Percy 
Smith, of Baliol, who was ordained to the curacy of Eversley. 
The season was unhealthy ; cholera was brooding over England, 
and a bad low fever broke out at Eversley, which gave the rector 
incessant work and anxiety. The parishioners got frightened. It 
-Tvas difficult to get nurses for the sick, so that he was with them at 
all hours ; and after sitting up a whole night with one bad case, a 
laborer's wife, the mother of a large family, that he might himself 
give the noui'ishment every half-hour on which the poor woman's 
life depended, he once more completely broke down, and London 
physicians advised his taking a sea voyage. A trip to America 
and back was proposed ; but he dreaded the loneHness, and his 
parents being strongly averse to the plan, he went again to 
Devonshire, hoping that a month's quiet and idleness would re- 
store him. 

From thence he writes home. 



Fishing. 119 

ToRRiDGE Moors, West Country Inn. 

" I have been fishing the Torridge to-day. Caught i^ dozen — 
very bright sun, which was against me. To-morrow I return to 
Clovelly. 1 have got a companion here who is fishing and collect- 
ing his rents. Gentleman-like man, and fiiend of Hawker's the 
West Country Poet. Tennyson was down here last year, and 
walked in on Hawker to collect Arthur legends." 

Clovelly, Aug. i6, 1849. 

" I have read Rabelais right through, and learnt immensely fi-om 
him. I have been reading P. Leroux's book on Christianity and 
Democracy, and am now reading Ruskin. The weather has been 

too stormy for trawling, but I have got a few nice shells 

My landlady is an extraordinary woman, a face and figure as of a 
queen, but all thought, sensibility and excitement ; a great ' devote ' 
and a true Christian ; between grief and religion she has learnt a 
blessed lesson. Old VVim. potters in, like an old grey-headed New- 
foundland dog, about three times a day to look after me in all sorts 
of kind and unnecessary ways. I have been pestered with letter 
after letter asking me to join this new popular Church paper, but 
have of course fought oif. I am convinced at moments that, after 
all, the best place for me is at home " 

" Saturday I start. J am quite in spirits at the notion of the 
Moor. It will give me continual excitement ; it is C[uite new to 
me — and I am well enough now to walk in moderation. I^et me 
know when you receive my drawings. I am doing you a set more 
— still better I hope. ' The Artist's Wife,' seven or eight shetches 
of Claude Mellot and Sabina, two of my most darling ideals, with a 
scrap of conversation annexed to each, just embodying my dreams 
about married love and its relation to art " 



TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. 

Clovelly, August 17, 1849. 

" I am at last enjoying perfect rest — doing nothing but fish, 
sail, chat with old sailor and Wesleyan cronies, and read, by way of 
a nice mixture, Rabelais, Pierre Leroux, and Ruskin. The first, 
were he seven times as unspeakably filthy as he is, I consider as 
])riceless in wisdom, and often in true evangelic godliness — more of 
him hereafter. The second is indeed a blessed dawn. The third, 
a noble, manful, godly book, a blessed dawn too : but I cannot 
talk about them ; I am as stupid as a porpoise, and I lie in the 
window, and smoke and watch the glorious cloud-phantasmagoria, 
infinite in color and form, crawling across the vast bay and deep 
woods below, and draw little sketches of figures, and do not even 
dieam, much less think " 



I20 Charles Kingsley. 



TO HIS WIFE. 
CoLEBROOK, Crediton, September 2, 1849. 

"Starting out to fish down to Drew's Teignton — the old Druid's 
sacred place, to see Logan stones and cromlechs. Yesterday was 
the most charming solitary day I ever spent in my life — scenery 
more lovely than tongue can tell. It brought out of me the follow- 
ing bit of poetry, with many happy tears. 

POET. 

I cannot tell what you say, green leaves, 

I cannot tell what you say ; 
But I know that there is a spirit in you, 

And .a word in you this day. 

I cannot tell what ye say, rosy rocks, 

I cannot tell what ye say ; 
But I know that there is a spirit in you, 

And a word in you this day. 

I cannot tell what ye say, brown streams, 

I cannot tell what ye say ; 
But I know in you too, a spirit doth live. 

And a word in you this day. 

THE WORD'S ANSWER. 

Oh, rose is the color of love and youth, 

And green is the color of faith and truth, 

And brown of the fruitful clay. 

The earth is fruitful, and faithful, and young. 

And her bridal morn shall rise ere long. 

And you shall know what the rocks and the streams. 

And the laughing gi-een-woods say ! 

" Show these to C. If she has taken in the real good of Spino- 
zism, she ought to understand them. To-morrow I tramp for Two 
Bridges." 

And now the Cholera was once more in England, and sanitary 
matters absorbed him. He preacJied three striking sermons at 
Eversley, on Cholera, "Who causes Pestilence" (published to- 
gether in 1854, with preface). He worked in London and the 
country in the crusade against dirt and bad drainage. The terrible 
revelations of the state of the Water supply in London saddened 



Memories by C. Kegan Paul. 121 

and sickened him, and led to his writing an article in the " North 
British Review" on the subject.* 

At this period many young men from Oxford and elsewhere 
gathered round him. The following letter from one of them, Mr. 
C. Kegan Paul, speaks for itself of the life at Eversley, which had 
become a centre to so many enquiring spirits. 

" I first saw Charles Kingsley in Oxford, in the spring tSrm of 
1848. He had just published the ' Saint's Tragedy,' and came up 
to stay with his old schoolfellow, Cowley Powles, one of our Exeter 
tutors. He had not, I think, the least notion he would find himself 
famous, but he was so among a not inconsiderable section of young 
Oxford, even one month after the drama had appeared. A large 
number of us were thoroughly dissatisfied with the high-church 
teaching, which then was that of most earnest tutors in Oxford. 
There were, indeed, some noble exceptions, — Jowett of Balliol, 
Powles of Exeter, Congreve of Wadham, Stanley of University, 
Clough of Oriel. But they were scattered, and their influence was 
over men here and there ; the high-churchmen held the mass of 
intelligent young men, many of whom revolted in spirit, yet had 
not found a leader. Here was a book which showed that there was 
poetry also in the strife against asceticism, whose manly preface 
was as stirring as the verse it heralded. We looked at its author 
with the deepest interest ; it was a privilege to have been in the 
room with him ; but my acquaintance with him was necessarily of 
the slightest. 

"In the summer of the following year, H. Percy Smith, of Balliol, 
who also had met Kingsley and taken a walk with him during that 
memorable Oxford visit, went to Eversley as curate, and almost as 
soon as he was settled, invited me to stay with him in his lodgings, 
about half a mile from the Rectory, The day after my arrival we 
dined at the Rectory. You were then using as a dining-room the 
larger room which afterwards was your drawing-room, and were 
alone ; Percy and I were the only guests. We went into the study 
afterwards while Kingsley smoked his pipe, and the evening is one 
of those that stand out in my memory with peculiar vividness. 1 
had never then, I have seldom since, heard a man talk so well. 

"Kingsley's conversational powers were very remarkable. In 
the first place he had, as may be easily understood by the readers 
of his books, a rare command of racy and correct English, while he 
was so many sided that he could take keen interest in almost any 
subject which attracted those about him. He had read, and read 
nuich, not only in matters which every one ought to know, but had 
gone deeply into many out-of the-way and unexpected studies. Old 

* "Water Supply of London," puljlislied in the MiscelUnies. 



122 Charles Kingsley. 

medicine, magic, the occult properties of plants, folk-lore, mesmer- 
ism, nooks and bye-ways of history, old legends ; on all these he 
was at home. On the habits and dispositions of animals he would 
talk as though he were that king in the Arabian Nights who under- 
stood the language of beasts, or at least had lived among the 
gipsies who loved him so well. The stammer, which in those days 
was so much more marked than in later years, and which was a 
serious discomfort to himself, was no drawback to the charm of his 
conversation. Rather the hesitation before some brilliant flash of 
words served to lend point to and intensify what he was saying ; 
and when, as he sometimes did, he fell into a monologue, or recited 
a poem in his sonorous voice, the stammer left him wholly, as it did 
when he read or preached in church. 

" When, however, I use the word monologue, it must not be 
supposed that he ever monopolized the talk. He had a courteous 
deference for the opinions of the most insignificant person in the 
circle, and was even too tolerant of a bore. With all his vast 
powers of conversation, and ready to talk on every or any subject, 
he was never superficial. What he knew he knew well, and was 
always ready to admit the fact when he did not know. 

"The morning after that evening in the study, came a note to 
me dated, ' Bed this morning,' inviting me to breakfast, and to 
transfer my goods from the village public house — Percy Smith had 
no spare bed-room — to the Rectory. I did so, and this was the 
first of many visits, each one of increasing intimacy and pleasure. 
1 cannot do better than expand some notes of those visits, which I 
sent to the 'Examiner' newspaper, in the week which followed 
Kingsley' s death last year : — 

" ' To those who, in the years of which we speak, were constant 
guests at Eversley, that happy home can never be forgotten. 
Kingsley was in the vigor of his manhood and of his intellectual 
powers, was administering his parish with enthusiasm, was writing, 
reading, fishing, walking, preaching, talking, with a twenty-parson 
power, but was at the same time wholly unlike the ordinary and 
conventional parson. 

" 'The picturesque bow-windowed Rectory rises to memory as it 
stood with all its doors and windows open On certain hot summer 
days, the sloping bank with its great fir-tree, the garden — a gravel 
sweep before the drawing-room and dining-rooms, a grass-plat before 
the study, hedged off from the walk — and the tall active figure of the 
Rector trami)ing up and down one or the other. His energy made him 
seem everywhere, and to pervade every part of house and garden. 
The MS. of the book he was writing lay open on a rough standing 
desk, which was merely a shelf projecting from the wall ; his pupils 
— two in number, and treated like his own sons — were working in 
the dining-room ; his guests perhaps lounging on the lawn, or read- 
ing in the study. And he had time for all, going from writing to 



Memories by C. Kegan Paul. 123 

lecturing on optics, or to a passage in Virgil, from this to a vehe- 
ment conversation with a guest, or tender care for his wife — who 
was far from strong — or a romp with his children. He would work 
himself into a sort of white heat over his book, till, too excited to 
write more, he would calm himself down by a pipe, pacing his grass- 
plat in thought and with long strides. He was a great smoker, and 
tobacco was to him a needful sedative. He always used a long 
and clean clay pipe, which lurked in all sorts of unexpected places. 
But none was ever smoked which was in any degree foul, and when 
there was a vast accunuilation of old pipes, they were sent back 
again to the kiln to be rebaked, and returi:ed fresh and new. 
This gave him a striking simile, which, in "Alton Locke," he puts 
into the mouth of James Crossthwaite. " Katie here believes 
in Purgatory, where souls are burnt clean again, like 'bacca 
pipes." ' 

"When luncheon was over, and any arrears of the morning's 
work cleared up, a walk with Kingsley was an occasion of constant 
pleasure. His delight in every fresh or known bit of scenery was 
most keen, and his knowledge of animal life invested the walk 
with shigular novelty even to those who were already country bred. 
1 remember standing on the top of a hill with him when the autumn 
evening was fading, and one of the sun's latest rays struck a patcl\ 
on the moor, bringing out a very peculiar mixture of red-brown 
colors. What were the precise plants which composed that patch ? 
He hurriedly ran over the list of what he thought they were, and 
then set off over hedge and ditch, through bog and water-course, 
to verify the list he had already made. 

" During these afternoon walks he would visit one or another of 
his very scattered hamlets or single cottages on the heaths. Those 
who have read 'My Winter Garden,' in the 'Miscellanies,' know 
how he loved the moor under all its aspects, and the great groves 
of firs. Nothing was ever more real than Kingsley's parish visit- 
ing. He believed absolutely in the message he bore to the poor, 
and the health his ministrations conveyed to their souls, but he was 
at the same time a zealous sanitary reformer, and cared for their 
bodies also. I was with him once when he visited a sick man 
suffering from fever. The atmosphere of the little ground-tioor 
bed-room was horrible, but before the Rector said a word he ran 
up-stairs, and, to the great astonishment of the uihabitants of the 
cottage, bored, with a large auger he had brought with him, several 
holes above the bed's head for ventilation. His reading in the 
sick room and his words were wholly free from cant. The Psalms 
and the Prophets, with judicious omissions, seemed to gain new 
meaning as he read them, and his after-words were always cheerful 
and hopeful. Sickness, in his eyes, seemed always to sanctify and 
purify. He wouki say, with the utmost modesty, that the patient 
endurance of the poor taught him day by day lessons which he took 



124 Charles Kingsley. 

back again as God's message to the bed-side from which he had 
learnt them. 

" One great element of success in his intercourse with his parish- 
ioners was his abounding humor and fun. What caused a hearty 
laugh was a real refreshment to him, and he had the strongest be- 
lief that laughter and humor were elements in the nature of God 
Himself 

" This abounding humor has with some its dangers. Not so 
with Kingsley. No man loved a good story better than he, but 
there was always in what he told or what he suffered himself to 
hear, a good and pure moral underlying what might be coarse in 
expression. While he would laugh with the keenest sense of 
amusement at what might be simply broad, he had the most utter 
scorn and loathing for all that could debase and degrade. And he 
was the most reverent of men, though he would say things which 
seemed daring because people were unaccustomed to .hear sacred 
things named without a pious snuffle. This great reverence led 
him to beeven unjust to some of the greatest humorists. I quoted 
Heine one day at his table. 'Who was Heine?' asked his little 
daughter. ' A wicked man, my dear,' was the only answer given 
to her, and an implied rebuke to me. 

" On the week-day evenings he frequently held a ' cottage 
lecture ' or short service in a cottage, for the old and feeble who 
lived at a distance from church. To this he would sally forth in a 
fisherman's knitted blouse if the night were wet or cold. 

" Old and new friends came and went as he grew famous — not 
too strong a word for the feeling of those days — and the drawing- 
room evening conversations and readings, the tobacco parliaments 
later into the night, included many of the most remarkable persons 
of the day. 

" I do not give any recollections of those conversations, partly 
because it would be difficult to do so without giving names which 
I have no right here to introduce, and partly because his opinions 
on all subjects will be amply illustrated in his own words from let- 
ters to many who sought his advice. But 1 know that those 
evening talks kept more than one who shared in them from 
Rome, and weaned more than one from vice, while others had 
doubts to faith removed which had long paralyzed the energy of 
their lives. 

" It would not be right, however, to pass over the fact that it was 
through his advice, and mainly in consequence of the aid he gave 
me, that I was myself enabled to take orders. You know that I 
have again become a layman, but though my views have greatly 
developed from those I held twenty-three years ago, I do not 
regret that I then was encouraged to become a clergyman. Kings- 
ley enabled me to dismiss at once and forever all faith whatever in 
the popular doctrine of eternal punishment, and all the whole class 



Memories by C. Kegan Paul. 125 

of dogmas which tend to confuse the characters of God and the 
Devil. . 

" A day rises vividly to memory, when Kingsley remained shut 
up in the study during the afternoon, the door bolted, inaccessible ' 
to all interruption. The drowsy hour had come on between the 
lights, when it was time to dress for dinner, and talk, without the 
great inspirer of it, was growing disjointed and fragmentary, when 
he came in from the study, a paper, yet undried, in his hand, and 
read us the ' Lay of the Last Buccaneer,' most spirited of all his 
ballads. One who had been .lying back in an arm-chair, known 
for its seductive properties as ' sleepy hollow,' roused up then, and 
could hardly sleep all night for the inspiring music of the words 
read by one of the very best readers I have ever heard. 

" It was my good fortune to be staying with you through the sum- 
mer in which the greater part of ' Hypatia ' was written. I was 
especially struck not only with his power of work, but with the extra- 
ordinary pains he took to be accurate in detail. We spent one 
whole day in searching the four folio volumes of Synesius for a fact 
he thought was there, and which was found there at last. The hard 
reading he had undergone for that book alone would furnish an 
answer to some who thought him superficial. 

"Others will write better than I of his work in the parish gener- 
ally, and of his theology. 

" In some places in the country it is still the custom to perforin 
part of the marriage service in the body of the church, and then 
proceed to the chancel. So it had always been in the Oxfordshire 
parish to which I was appointed. Kingsley told with infinite delight 
how a curate at or near Bideford had tried to introduce the practice, 
and how the Devon clerk protested, saying, ' First he went up the 
church, and then he went down the church, side-a-ways, here-a-ways, 
and theer-a-ways, a scrattlin' like a crab.' 

" His sermons were full of most tender care for individual 
cases known only to himself. When he was most impressive and 
pathetic it was generally because his sermon touched the sorrow of 
some one in the congregation, though the words seemed general. 
Once, when I was to preach for him, he asked me to let him look 
at two or three IMS. sermons I had with me. He read them care- 
fully, and selected one, not by any means the best written. Preach 
that, Charles ; there is a poor soul who will be in church whose sins 
it may touch, and whose sorrows it may heal. God help us all.' 

" In the summer of 185 1, I travelled from Reading to London 
with Miss Mitford, who did not then know Kingsley, though after- 
wards they became very good friends. She said she had driven by 
Eversley churchyard a few days before, and had seen Kingsley 
reading the funeral service ; that he looked quite what she should 
have expected, ' a pale student.' I need hardly say she had seen 
his curate, and that Kingsley was as unlike a pale student as any 



126 Charles Kings ley. 

man who ever lived. His teniperament was artistic and impulsive. 
He delighted in out-door life, in sport, in nature in all her moods 
and phases. His ph)'sical frame was powerful and wiry, his com- 
plexion dark, his eye bright and piercing. Yet he often said he did 
not think that his would be along life, and the event has sadly con- 
firmed his anticipations. 

" My life at Eton as Master in College was one which left me 
scant time for visits to Eversley. But my rare interviews with 
Kingsley, when I snatched a day to drive over, were always full of 
dehght. I often consulted him abo^it professional difficulties, and 
found his insight into school-boy life most remarkable, and his 
sympathy with the young unflagging. He spent one day only with 
us at Eton in those eight years, but I remember his delight in a row 
on the river, visiting the boys' bathing places. 

" Cambridge, indeed, in those years was more accessible than 
Eversley, and that again would furnish me with somewhat to say, 
did not others know that portion of the life better than I. 1 was 
staying at Cambridge at the time of the Prince Consort's death, 
and remember how he was affected by it, as at the loss of a per- 
sonal friend. I walked over the next day to Maddingley with 
Kingsley, who wished to hear AVindsor news from some of the suite, 
and met, on the way, more than one of the specially chosen young 
associates of the Prince of Wales. I can never forget, nor probably 
will those who were addressed forget, the earnest, solemn, and 
■ agitated tones in which he spoke of the Prince Consort's care for 
his son, and the duty which lay on them, the Prince of Wales' 
young friends, to see that they did all in their power to enforce the 
wise counsel of him who was dead. 

" My removal into Dorset yet further sundered us in person, but 
never in heart. When we met from time to time, his cordial grasp 
said more than words to assure me of the old brotherly affection. 

•' Coming once more to live in London, I hoped for the old 
unrestricted intimacy once again. It was not so to be. I saw him, 
and saw him only but once, enough to notice that he was sorely 
changed in body, which, though far from puny, was fretted away 
by his fiery spirit. And when they laid him to rest, in Eversley 
churchyard, near the graves where some whom he loved repose, 
and where the shadow of the great Scotch fir lies each summer 
afternoon, I could stand by his grave only in thought. But it will 
ever have association of the most solemn kind. I am among those 
many who can never forget that, widely as they have differed from 
Charles Kingsley, and that, whatever were his failings and incom- 
pletenesses, his was just that one influence which, at a time they 
needed a guide, roused them to live manly lives, and play their 
parts in the stir of the world, while to me he was the noblest, 
truest, kindest friend I ever had or can hope to have." 



CHAPTER IX. 

1850— 1851. 
Aged 31, 32. 

Resigns the Office of Clerk in Orders at Chelsea — Pupil Life at Eversley — Pub- 
lication of " Alton Locke" — Letters from Mr. Carlyle — Writes for " Chris- 
tian Socialist" — Troubled State of the Country — Burglaries — The Rectory 
Attacked. 

The year 1850 was spent by the Rector of Eversley at home, in 
better health, with still fuller employment ; for in addition to parish 
and writing, he had the work of teaching a private pupil, which 
was quite new to him. Times were bad, rates were high, rate- 
payers discontented, and all classes felt the pressure. The Rector 
felt it also, but he met it by giving the tenants back ten per cent, 
on their tithe payments, and thus at once and for ever he woa 
their confidence. 

He had, since his marriage, held the office of Clerk in Orders in 
his father's parish of St. Luke's, Chelsea, which added consider- 
ably to his income, and in those days was not considered incom- 
patible with non-residence ; but though his deputy was well paid, 
and he himself occasionally preached and lectured in Chelsea, he 
looked upon the post as a sinecure, and so he resigned it. The 
loss of income must however be met, and this could only be done 
by his pen. It was a heavy struggle just then, with Rector's Poor 
Rates at ;^i5o per annum, and the parish charities mainly depen- 
dent on him ; but he set to work with indomitable industry, and 
by a great effort finished "Alton Locke." It was a busy winter, 
for the literary work was not allowed to interfere with the pupil 
work, or either with the parish ; he got up at five every morning, 
and wrote till breakfast ; after breakfast he worked with his pupil 
and at his sermons ; the afternoons were devoted as usual to cot- 
tage visiting ; the evenings to adult school and superintending the 
fair copy of "Alton Locke" made by his wife for the press. It 
was the only book of which he had a fair copy made. His habit 



128 Charles Kings ley. 

was thoroughly to master his subject, whether book or sermon, al- 
ways out in the open air, in his garden, on the moor, or by the side 
of a lonely trout stream, and never to put pen to paper till the 
ideas were clothed in words ; and these, except in the case of 
poetry, he seldom altered. For many years his writing was all 
done by his wife from his dictation, while he paced up and down 
the room. 

When ''Alton Locke" was completed, the difficulty was to find 
a pubUsher : Messrs. Parker, who had, or thought they had, suffered 
in reputation for publishing "Yeast" in the pages of Fraser, and 
" Politics for the People," refused the book ; and Mr. Carlyle 
kindly gave the author an introduction to Messrs. Chapman & 
Hall, who, on the strength of his recommendation, undertook to 
bring it out. 

" I have written to Chapman," says Mr. Carlyle, " and you shall 
have his answer, on Sunday, if it come within post hours to-mor- 
row ; if not then on Tuesday. But without any answer, I believe 
I may already assure you of a respectful welcome, and the new 
novel of a careful and hopeful examination from the man of books. 
He is sworn to secrecy too. This is all the needful to-day, — in 
such an imspeakable hurry as this present. 

" And so, right glad myself to hear of a new explosion, or salvo 
of red-hot shot against the Devil's Dung-heap, from that particular 
battery, 

" I remain, 

"Yours always tndy, 

" T. Carlyle." 

The spread of infidel opinions among the working classes and 
the necessity of meeting them, continually occupied him, and he 
writes to his friend Mr. Ludlow, 

"But there is something else which weighs awfully on my mind, 
' — the first number of Cooper's Journal, which he sent me the other 
day. Here is a man of immense influence, openly preaching 
Straussism to the workmen, and in a fair, honest, manly way, which 
must tell. Who will answer him ? Who will answer Strauss ? Who 
will denounce Strauss as a vile aristocrat, robbing the poor man of 
his Saviour — of the ground of all democracy, all freedom, all asso- 
ciation — of the Charter itself? Oh si viihi centum voces et ferrea 
lingua. Think about that — talk to Maurice about that. To me 
it is awfully pressing. If the priests of the Lord are wanting to the 
cause now ! — woe to us ! ... . 



A Flood. 129 

"Don't fire at me about smoking. I do it, because it does me 
good, and I could not (for I have tried again and again) do without 
it. I smoke the very cheapest tobacco. In the meantime I am 
keeping no horse — a most real self-sacrifice to me. But if 1 did, I 
should have so much the less to give to the poor. God knows all 
about that, John Ludlow, and about other things too." 

EvERSLEY, June, 1850. 

" Up till one this morning, keeping a great flood out — amid such 
lightning and rain as I think I never saw before; up to my knees 
in water, working with a pickaxe by candle-light to break holes in 
the. wall, to prevent all being washed away. Luckily my garden is 
saved. But it all goes with me under the head of ' fun.' Some- 
thing to do — and lightning is my highest physical enjoyment. I 
should like to have my thunderstorm daily, as one has one's 
dinner. What a providence I did not go to town last night. 
My man was gone home, and we should have had the garden 
ruined, and the women frightened out of their wits." 

A new penny periodical had been proposed, to counteract the 
spread of infidel opinions among the masses. Before it was set 
on foot the writers for "Politics" brought out a series of tracts, 
" On Christian Socialism." Among the most remarkable was 
" Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," by Parson Lot,* exposing the slop- 
selling system, which was at the root of much of the distress in 
London and the great towns. The Tailors' Association was formed, 
and a shop opened in Castle Street, to which the publication of 
" Cheap Clothes " took many customers ; and in June, a friend 
writes to Mrs. Kingsley from London : — 

". . . Three copies of 'Cheap Clothes, and Nasty' are 
lying on the Guards' Club table ! Percy Fielding (Captain in the 
Guards) went to Castle Street and ordered a coat, and I met two 
men at dinner yesterday with Castle Street coats on." 

In August the Rectory party had an addition, Mr. I^ees, a 
young Cambridge man arriving for three months to read for Holy 
Orders. It was a bold step in those days for any man to take, to 
read divinity with the author of "Yeast" and "Alton Locke," but 
after twenty-six years' ministry in the Church, he looks back to it 
as a time not only of enjoyment, but of profit. 

With his pupil he read Strauss's " I>eben Jesu," of which an 
Enghsh translation had just been published. He considered 

* Now republished in a new edition of " Alton Locke." 



130 Charles Kings ley. 

Strauss, as he considered Comte eighteen years later, the great 
false prophet of the day, who must be faced and fought against by 
the clergy. 

To another candidate for Holy Orders, who wrote to him at that 
time, he replies : — 

TO C. KEGAN PAUL, ESQ. 

" You wish to know what to read for Orders ? That depends 
on what you mean. If to get through a Bishop's examination, just 
ask any one who has been lately ordained what he crammed ; and 
cram that, which may take you some six weeks, and no trouble. 

"But if you want to be of any use, I should advise you, if you 
can, which all men cannot, to sit down and read your Bible 
honestly, and let it tell you its own story, utterly careless of any 
theories. High Church or Puritan, which have been put into the 
text first, and then found there by their own inserters. 

" For instance : read the Pentateuch and the books of Samuel 
and Kings ; Isaiah in I^ovvth's and the minor prophets in New- 
come's translation ; the Gospels from Alford's new text, and the 
Epistles by the light of your own common sense and honest scholar- 
ship. Believe that if ttoCc means a foot in profane Greek, it will 
most likely mean a foot also in ecclesiastical Greek, and avoid the 
popular belief that the Apostles write barbarisms, whenever their 
words cannot be made to square at first sight with Laud or Calvin. 

" For books : Kitto's ' Encyclopaedia of Biblical Literature' will 
tell you all, that is known of Bible history and antiquities ; * and for 
doctrine, I advise vou to read Maurice's ' Kingdom of Christ,' 
' Christmas Day and' other sermons,' and his new edition of the 
'Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.' 

"Thus much now, but if you will ask me questions from time to 
time, I will tell you all I know, if you think my knowledge worth 
having. Never think of bothering me. It is a delight to me to 
give hints to any one whom I can ever so little put forward in these 
confused times." 

During the autumn of 1850 the state of the country was ominous. 
In his own parish there was still low fever, and a general depression' 
prevailed. Work was slack, and as winter approached gangs of 
housebreakers and men who preferred begging and robbery to the 
workhouse, wandered about Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex. No 
house was secure. Mr. Holiest, the clergyman of Frimley, was 

* It must be remembered that this was in 185c, before the " Dictionary of 
the Bible," &c., &c., were published. 



Forebodings. 131 

murdered in his own garden while pursuing the thieves ; and 
the Httle Rectory at Eversley, whicli had never hitherto needed pro- 
tection, and had scarcely a strong lock on its doors, was armed 
with bolts and bars, fortunately before it too was attempted by the 
same gang. The Rector slept with loaded pistols by his bed-side, 
and policemen from Winchester watched in and about the quiet 
garden by night. The future of England looked dark, and he writes 
to Mr. Maurice : — 

Eversley, Sunday, October, 1850. 
" My dearest Master, 

"I hear you are come home. If so, for God's sake come 
down and see me, if but for a day. I have more doubts, perplexi- 
ties, hopes, and fears to pour out to you than I could utter in a 
week, and to the rest of our friends I cannot open. You compre- 
hend me ; you are bigger than I. Come down and tell me what 
to think and do, and let Fanny as well as me, have the delight of 
seeing your face again. I would come to you, but I have two 
pupils, and business besides, and also don't know when and how to 
catch you. 

" The truth is, I feel we are all going on in the dark, toward some- 
thing wonderful and awful, but whether to a precipice or a paradise, 
or neither, or both, I cannot tell. All my old roots are tearing up 
one by one, and though I keep a gallant ' front ' before the Char- 
lotte Street people (Council of Association), little they know of 
the struggles within me, the laziness, the terror. Pray for me ; I 
could lie down and cry at times. A poor fool of a fellow, and yet 
feeling thrust ui)on all sorts of great and unspeakable paths, in- 
stead of being left in peace to classify butterflies and catch trout. 

"If it were not for the Psalms and Prophets, and the Gospels, 
I should turn tail, and flee shamefully, giving up the whole ques- 
tion, and all others, as (Zgri somniay 

TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. 

Eversley, October, 1850. 

" I have been thinking about two ways of working this penny 
periodical, and which is the right. Whether our present idea is 
not to write down to the people, to address ourselves too exclu- 
sively to the working man, to give them only a part of our thoughts ? 
Whether the truly democratic method would not be to pour out our 
whole souls in it. To say, if not all we think, yet all we think fit 
to say on every subject ; to make it, if possible, an organ of Chris- 
tian teaching to all classes, on the things now agitating their minds. 

" To have the best criticism, metaphysics, history, and everything 
else, and by teaching all, to teach the working man merely as a. 



132 Charles Kings ley. 

member of the whole, and of equal rights and mind with all. I 
cannot help fancying this the true brotherly method — to speak to 
factory-worker and duke alike — to put them on one common 
ground, show that we consider them subject to the same law. 

" The rogues are frightened off. I had to send a charge of 
slugs, not deadly though unpleasantly straight, after one the other 
night, and they have eschewed us since. 

" I will get ready the Labor Conference Tract as soon as I can. 
But I have been disorganized, and kept up at night by these sons 
of Belial, and so I am behind in my work. . . . ." 

" Jerenn"ah is my favorite book now. It has taught me more 
than tongue can tell. But I am much disheartened, and am 
minded to speak no more words in this name (Parson Lot). Yet 
all these bullyings teach one, correct one, warn one, show one 
that God is not leaving one to go one's own way. ' Christ reigns,' 
quoth Luther." 

''Alton Locke" came out in August, and the verdict of the 
Press was of course a severe one. The best artizans, however, 
hailed it as a true picture of their class and circumstances, and 
there are still thoughtful men and women of the higher orders who 
consider it one of the finest of his productions. Mr. Carlyle's 
words on the subject are noteworthy. 

Chelsea, October 31, 1850. 

" It is now a great many weeks that I have been your debtor 
for a book which in various senses was very welcome to me. 
' Alton Locke ' arrived in Annandale, by post, from my wife, early 
in September, and was swiftly read by me, under the bright sun- 
shine, by the sound of rushing brooks and other rural accompani- 
ments. I believe the book is still doing duty in those parts ; for I 
had to leave it behind me on loan, to satisfy the public demand. 
Forgive me that I have not, even by a word, thanked you for this 
favor. Continual shifting and moving ever since, not under the 
best omens, has hindered me from writing almost on any subject 
or to any person. 

" Apart from your treatment of my own poor self (on which sub- 
ject let me not venture to speak at all), I found plenty to like, and 
be grateful for in the book : abundance, nay exuberance of gen- 
eral zeal ; head-long impetuosity of determination towards the man- 
ful side on all manner of questions ; snatches of excellent poetic 
desciiption, occasional sunbursts of noble insight ; everywhere a 
certain wild intensity, which hol'ds the reader fast as by a spell : 
these surely are good qualities, and pregnant omens in a man of 
your seniority in the regiment ! At the same time, I am bound to 



Letter from Thomas Carlyle. 133 

say, the book is definable as crude ; by no manner of means the 
best we expect of you — if you will resolutely temper your fire. 
But to make the malt sweet, the fire should and must be slow : 
so says the proverb, and now, as before, I include all duties for 
you under that one ! ' Saunders Mackaye,' my invaluable country- 
man in this book, is nearly perfect ; indeed I greatly wonder how 
you did contrive to manage him — his very dialect is as. if a na- 
tive had done it, and the whole existence of the rugged old hero 
is a wonderfully splendid and coherent piece of Scotch bravura. 
In both of your women, too, I find some grand poetic features ; 
but neither of them is worked out into the ' Daughter of the Sun ' 
she might have been ; indeed, nothing is worked out anywhere 
in comparison with ' Saunders ; ' and the impression is of a fer- 
vid creation still left half chaotic. This is my literary verdict, both 
the black of it and the white. 

" Of the grand social and moral questions we will say nothing 
whatever at present : any time within the next two centuries, it is 
like, there will be enough to say about them ! On the whole, you 
will have to persist ; like a cannon-ball that is shot, you will have to 
go to your mark, whatever that be. I stipulate farther that you 
come and see me when you are at Chelsea ; and that you pay no 
attention at all to the foolish clamor of reviewers, whether laud- 
atory or condemnatory. 

"Yours with true wishes, 

"T. Carlyle." 

The publication of "Yeast" brought him some enemies and 
many correspondents ; and more than one "fast man" came down 
from London to open his heart to its author and ask advice. In 
the religious world the Anglican question occupied one large sec- 
tion of the Church, and the tide set Rome-wards. Clergymen 
wrote to him to ask him to advise them how to save members of 
their flock from Popery ; mothers to beg him to try and rescue their 
daughters from the influence of Protestant confessors ; while wo- 
men themselves hovering between Rome and Anglicanism, be- 
tween the attractions of a nunnery and the monotonous duties of 
family life, laid their difficulties before the author of the " Saint's 
Tragedy." He who shrank on principle from the ofiice of father- 
confessor had the work thrust upon him by many whom he never 
met face to face in this world, and whom he dared not refuse to 
help. 

The labor was severe to a man who felt the importance of such 
communications, and the responsibility of giving counsel, as in- 



134 Charles Kings ley. 

tensely as he did ; and those who saw the daily letters on his study 
table would say that the weight of such correspondence alone was 
enough to wear any man down, who had not in addition sermons 
to write, books to compose, a parish to work, and a pupil to teach. 
But his iron energy, coupled with a deep conscientiousness, en- 
abled him to get through it. " One more thing done," he would 
say, " thank God," as each letter was written, each chapter of a 
book or page of sermon dictated to his wife ; " and oh ! how 
blessed it will be when it is all over, to lie down in that dear 
churchyard." 

The correspondence increased year by year, as each fresh book 
touched and stirred fresh hearts. Officers both in the army and 
navy would write to him — all strangers — one to ask his opinion 
about duelling ; another to beg him to recommend or write a ra- 
tional form of family prayer for camp or hut ; another for a set of 
prayers to be used on board ship in her Majesty's navy ; others on 
more delicate social points of conscience and conduct, which the 
writers would confide to no other clergyman ; but all to thank him 
for his books. The atheist dared tell him of his doubts ; the pro- 
fligate of his fall ; young men brought up to go into Holy Orders, 
but filled with misgivings about the Articles, the Creeds, and, more 
than all, on the question of endless punishment, would pour out all 
their difficulties to him ; and many a noble spirit now working as a 
priest and pastor in the Church of England would never have 
taken orders but for Charles Kingsley. 



CHAPTER X. 

1851. 
Aged 32. 

Opening of the Great Exhibition — Attack on "Yeast" in tlie " Guardian" and 
Reply — Occurrence in a London Church — Goes to Germany — Letter from 
Mr. John Martineau. 

The year of the Great Exhibition, which began with distress and 
discontent in England, and ended with a Revolution in Paris, was 
a notable one in the life of Charles Kingsley. His parochial work 
was only varied by the addition of new plans of draining the parish 
at the points where low fever had prevailed ; which he success- 
fully carried out without help from any sanitary board. " Hypa- 
tia " was begun as a serial in "Eraser's Magazine." "Santa 
Maura " and several shorter poems were written. He contributed 
to the " Christian Socialist " eight papers on " Bible Politics, or 
God justified to the People," four on the " Firmley Murder," three 
entitled "The Long Game," a few ballads and sonnets, and "The 
Nun's Pool," which had been rejected by the publishers of "Poli- 
tics." He preached two sermons in London, one of which made 
him notorious, and occasionally he attended the Conferences of 
the Promoters of Association. He crossed the Channel for the 
first time. His friendshi]) with Erederika Bremer, the Swedish 
novelist, and with Miss Mitford, date from this year. 

In January he writes to Mr. Maurice about the new romance 
which was dawning upon his imagination. 

EvERSLEY, January 16, 1851. 

" A thousand thanks for all your advice and information, which 
encourages me to say more. I don't know how far I shall be able 
to write much for the ' Christian Socialist.' Don't fancy that I am 
either lazy or afraid. But, if I do not use my pen to the uttermost 
in earning my daily bread, I shall not get through this year. I 
am paying off the loans which I got to meet the expenses of re- 



136 Charles Kings ley. 

pairing and furnishing ; but, with an income reduced this year by 
more than 200/., having given up, thank God, that sinecure clerk- 
ship, and having had to return ten per cent, of my tithes, owing to 
the agricultural distress, I have also this year, for the first time, the 
opportunity, and therefore the necessity, of supporting a good 
school. My available income, therefore, is less than 400/. I can- 
not reduce my charities, and I am driven either to give up my 
curate, or to write, and either of these alternatives, with the in- 
creased parish work, for I have got either lectures or night school 
every night in the week, and three services on Sunday, will demand 
my whole time. What to do unless 1 get pupils I know not. 
Martineau leaves me in June. 

"My present notion is to write a historical romance of the be- 
ginning of the fifth century, which has been breeding in my head 
this two years. But how to find time I know not. And if there 
is a storm brewing, of course I shall have to help to fight the Phil- 
istines. Would that I had wings as a dove, then would I flee away 
and be at rest ! I have written this selfish and egotistical letter to 
ask for your counsel ; but I do not forget that you have your own 
troubles. My idea in the romance is to set forth Christianity as 
the only really democratic creed, and philosophy, above all, s])ir- 
itualism, as the most exclusively aristocratic creed. Such has been 
my opinion for a long time, and what I have been reading lately 
confirms it more and more. Even Synesius, ' the philosophic ' 
bishop, is an aristocrat by the side of Cyril. It seems to me that 
such a book might do good just now, while the Scribes and Phaii- 
sees. Christian and heathen, are saying, ' This people, which 
knoweth not the law, is accursed ! ' Of English subjects I can 
write no more just now. I have exhausted both my stock and my 
brain, and really require to rest it, by turning it to some new field, 
in which there is richer and more picturesque life, and the elements 
are less confused, or rather, may be handled more in the mass 
than English ones now. 1 have long wished to do something an- 
tique, and get out my thoughts about the connection of the old 
world and the new ; Schiller's ' Gods of Greece ' expresses, I think, 
a tone of feeling very common, and which finds its vent in modern 
Neo-Platonism — Anythingarianism. But if you think I ought not, 
1 will not. I will o\iQy your order." 

TO GEORGE BRIMLEY, ESQ. 

Monday, October, 185 1. 

" I am quite astonished at th^ steady-going, respectable people 
who approve more or less of ' Al.on Locke.' It was but the other 
night, at the Speaker's, that Sir *** ***^ considered one 
of the safest Whig traditionists in England, gave in his adher- 
ence to the book in the kindest terms. Both the Marshalls have 



Teetotalism. 137 

done the same — so has Lord Ashburton. So have, strange to say, 
more than one ultra-respectable High-Tory Squire — so goes the 
world. If you do anything above party, the true-hearted ones of all 
parties sympathize with you. And all I want to do is to awaken 
the good men of all opinions to the necessity of shaking hands and 
laying their heads together, and to look for the day when the bad 
of all parties will get their deserts, which they will, very accurately, 
before Mr. Carlyle's friends, ' The Powers' and ' The Destinies,' 
have done with them. 

" The article I have not seen, and don't intend to. There is no 
use for a hot-tempered and foul-mouthed man like myself j^raying 
not to be led into temptation, and then reading, voluntarily, at- 
tacks on himself from the firm of Wagg, Wenham, and Co. But if 
you think I ought to answer the attack formally, pray tell me so. 

" Hypatia grows, little darling, and I am getting very fond of 
her ; but the period is very dark, folks having been given to lying 
then, as well as now, besides being so blind as not to see the mean- 
ing of their own time (perhaps, though, we don't of ours), and so 
put down, not what we should like to know, but what they liked 
to remember. Nevertheless there are materials for a grand book. 
And if 1 fail in it, I may as well give up writing — perhaps the best 
thing for me ; though, thanks to abuse-puffs, my books sell pretty 
steadily." 

The " Christian Socialist " movement had been severely at- 
tacked in an article in the " Edinburgh " and in the "Quarterly ; " 
in both articles Communism and Socialism were spoken of as 
identical, and the author of "Alton Locke" was pointed at as the 
chief offender. 

Among other topics discussed in the " Christian Socialist " was 
" Teetotalism." While Mr. Kingsley argued against it, and for 
the right of the poor man to wholesome (and therefore not public- 
house) beer, he was for ever urging on landlords, magistrates, and 
householders to make a stand against the increasing number of 
public-houses and consequent increase of drunkenness and de- 
moralization, which paralyzed the work of the clergy, by refusing 
licences to fresh public-houses, and above all by withholding spirit 
licences. He saw no hope for country parishes unless the number 
of public-houses could be legally restricted by the area of the jiar- 
ish and the amount of populatiorfHo the lowest possible number, 
and those placed under the most vigilant police superintendence, 
especially in the outlying districts where they are nests of poachers 
and bad characters, and utterly ruinous to the boys, girls, and 



138 Charles Kings ley. 

young men who frequent them from the moment they leave 
school. 

TO THOMAS HUGHES, ESQ. 

". . . . You are green in cottoning to me about our '48' 
mess. Because why? I lost nothing — 1 risked nothing. You 
fellows worked like bricks, spent money, and got midshipman's 
half-i)ay (nothing a day and find' yourself ), and monkey's allowancei 
(more kicks than halfpence). 1 risked no money ; 'cause why, I 
had none ; but made money out of the movement, and fame too. 
I've often thought what a poor creature I was. I made ;^i5o by 
' Alton Ivocke,' and never lost a farthing ; and I got, not in spite 
of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who 
would never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been 
a mendicant if I had holloaed when I got a facer, while I was win- 
ning by the cross, though I didn't mean to fight one. No. And 
if I'd had ^,4^100,000, I'd have, and should have, staked and lost it 
all in 1848-50. I should, Tom, for my heart was and is in i*-, and 
you'll see it will beat yet; but we ain't the boys, we don't see but 
half the bull's eye yet, and don't see at all the policeman which is. 
a-going on his beat behind the bull's eye, and no thanks to us. 
Still, some somedever, it's in the fates, that association is the pure 
caseine, and must be eaten by the human race if it would save its 
soul alive, which, indeed, it will ; only don't you think me a good 
fellow for not crying out, when I never had more to do than scratch 
myself, and away went the fleas. But you all were real bricks ; 
and if you were riled, why let him that is without sin cast the first 
stone, or let me carsfit for him, and see if I don't hit him in the 
eye. 

" Now to business ; I have had a sorter kinder sample day. 
Up at five, to see a dying man ; ought to have been up at two, but 
Ben King, the rat-catcher, who came to call me, was taken ner- 
vous ! ! ! and didn't make row enough ; was from 5.30 to 6.30 with 
the most dreadful case of agony — insensible to me, but not to his 
pain. Came home, got a wash and a pipe, and again to him at 
eight. Found him insensible to his own pain, with dilated pupils, 
dying of pressure of the brain — going any moment. Prayed the 
conmiendatory prayers over him, and started for the river with VV, 
Fished all the morning in a roaring N.E. gale, with the dreadful 
agonized face between me and the river, pondering on The mystery. 
Killed eight on ' March brown,' a ' governor,' by drowning the flies 
and taking 'em out gently to see if aught was there, which is the 
only dodge in a north-easter. 'Cause why? The water is warmer 
than the air — ergo, fishes don't like to put their noses out o' doors, 
and feeds at home down stairs. It is the only wrinkle, Tom. The 
captain fished a-top, and caught but three all day. They weren't 



Notes on Fishing. 139 

going to catch a cold in their heads to please him or any man. 
Clouds burn up at i p.m. I put on a minnow, and kill three 
more ; I should have had lots, but for the image of the dirty hick- 
ory stick, which would ' walk the waters like a thing of life,' just 
ahead of my minnow. Mem. never fish with the sun in your back ; 
it's bad enough with a fly, but with a minnow its strychnine and 
prussic acid. My eleven weighed together four and a-half pounds, 
three to the pound ; not good, considering I had passed many a 
two-pound fish, I know. 

•' Corollary. — Brass minnow don't suit the water. Where is 
your wonderful minnow ? Send me one down, or else a horn one, 
which I believes in desperate ; but send me something before 
Tuesday, and I will send you P.O.O, Horn minnow looks like a 
gudgeon, Avhich is the pure caseine. One pounder I caught to-day 
on the ' March brown,' wouiited his wittles, which was rude, but 
instructive ; and among worms was a gudgeon three inches long 
and more. Blow minnows — gudgeon is the thing. 

" Came off the water at three. Found my man alive, and, thank 
God, quiet. Sat with him, and thought him going once or twice. 
What a mystery that long, insensible death-struggle is ! Why 
should they be so long about it ? Then had to go to Hartley 
Row for an Archdeadon's Sunday-school meeting — three hours 
useless (I fear) speechifying and shop ; but the archdeacon is a 
good man, and works like a brick beyond his office. Got back at 
10.30, and sit writing to you. So goes one's day. All manner of 
incongruous things to do, and the very incongruity keeps one 
beany and jolly. Your letter was delightful. I read part of it to 
W., who says you are the best fellow on earth, to which I agree. 
" So no more from your sleepy and tired, 

" C. KiNGSLEY." 
TO HIS WIFE. 

EvERSLEY Rectory. 

" Friday. Such a ducking ! such a storm ! I am glad you were 
not at home for that only. We were up fishing on the great lake 
at Bramshill : the morning soft, rich, and lowering, with a low, fall- 
ing glass. I have been i)rophesying thunder for two or three days. 
Perch would not bite. I went to see E. H. ; and read and jirayed 
with her. How one gets to love consumptive patients. She seems 
in a most hajDpy, holy state of mind, thanks to Smith. Then I went 
on to L. G. ; sat a long time with her, and came back to the lake 
— day burning, or rather melting, the country looking glorious. 
The day as hot without sun, as it generally is with. There appeared 
a black storm over Reading. I found the luckless John had 
hooked a huge jack, which broke everything in a moment, and 
went off with all his spinning tackle which he prizes so. Tlien the 
storm began to work round in that mysterious way storms will, and 



140 Charles Kingsley. 

gather from every quarter, and the wind which had been dead calm* 
S.E., blew N.E., N., W., and lastly as it is doing now, and always 
does after these ex])losions, S.W. And then began such a sight, 
and we on the island in the middle of the great lake ! The light- 
ning was close, and we seemed to strike the ground near Sand- 
hurst again and again, and the crackle and roar and spit and 
grumble over our heads was awful. 1 have not been in such a storm 
for four years. And it rained — fancy it ! We walked home after 
an hour's ducking. I gave John a warm bath and hot wine and 
water, for I did not feel sure of his strength. I am not ashamed to 
say that I prayed a great deal during the storm, for we were in a 
very dangerous place in an island under high trees ; and it seemed 
dreadful never to see you again. I count the hours till Monday. 
Tell the chicks I found a real wild duck's nest on the island, full of 
eggs, and have brought one home to hatch it under a hen ! Kiss 
them for me. We dined at the T.'s last night, and after dinner went 
birds' nesting in the garden, and found plenty. Tell Rose a bull- 
finch's, with eggs, and a chaffinch's, and an oxeye's, and a thrush's, 
and a greenfinch's; and then Ball and I, to the astonishment and 
terror of old Mrs. Caujpbell, climbed to the top of the highest fir 
tree there, to hang our hats on the top. 

The opening of the Great Exhibition was a matter of deep in- 
terest to him, not only for its own sake, but for that of the Great 
Prince who was the prime mover in the undertaking. On enter- 
ing the building he was moved to tears ; to him it was like going 
into a sacred place, not a mere show as so many felt it, and still 
less a mere gigantic shop, in which wares were displayed for selfish 
purposes, and from mere motives of trade competition. The 
science, the art, the noble ideas of universal peace, universal 
brotherhood it was meant to shadow forth and encourage, excited 
him intensely, while the feeling that the realization of those great 
and noble ideas was as yet so far off", and that these achievements 
of physical science were mere forecastings of a great but distant 
future, saddened him as profoundly. Four days after the opening, 
he preached to a I^ondon congregation in St. Margaret's, West- 
minster, on Psalm Ixviii. 18, and Eph. iv. 8 : " When He ascended 
up on high. He led captivity captive, and received gifts for mefi, 
yea, even for His enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among 
them,'' he startled his hearers by contrasting the wide-spread un- 
behef of the present day in God, as the Fount of all science, all 
art, all the intelligence of the nation, with the simple faith of our 
forefathers. 



Attack on ''Yeast!' 141 

In the month of May there was a review of his "Yeast" in the 
" Guardian " by a well-known Oxford graduate, a strong partisan 
of the Anglican party. The review was anonymous, and con- 
tained very grave charges against the book and its writer — of 
heresy — of encouraging profligacy, &c., &c. 

Their effect was to leave a general impression that the book in- 
culcated the vilest principles, and most pernicious doctrines, while 
not a single quotation from it was given, so as to afford the readers 
of the review an opportunity of judging for themselves. 

Mr. Kingsley had hitherto made it a rule not to answer news- 
paper attacks on himself, especially those of the religious press, 
but these charges being beyond all precedent, he repudiated them 
in the following indignant words : 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE " GUARDIAN." 

May, 1851. 
" Sir, 

" Having lived for several years under the belief that the Editor 
of the ' Guardian ' was a gentleman and a Christian, 1 am bound 
to take for granted that you have not yourself read the book called 
' Yeast,' which you have allowed" to be reviewed in your columns. 
This answer therefore is addressed, not to you, but to your re- 
viewer ; and I have a right to expect that you will, as an act of 
common fairness, insert it. 

" I most thoroughly agree with the reviewer that he has not mis- 
understood me ; on the contrary, he sees most clearly the gist of 
the book, as is proved by his carefully omitting any mention what- 
soever of two questions connected with a character whose existence 
is passed over in silence, which form the very pith and moral of 
the whole book. I know well enougli why he has ignored them ; 
because they were the very ones which excited his wrath. 

" But he makes certain allegations against me which I found it 
somewhat difficult to answer, from their very preposterousness, till, 
in Pascal' s Fifteenth Provincial Letter, I fell on an argument 
which a certain Capuchin Father, Valerian, found successful against 
the Jesuits, and wnich seems to suit the reviewer exactly. I shall 
therefore proceed to apply it to the two accusations which concern 
me most nearly as a churcliman. 

" I. He asserts that I say that ' it is common sense and logic to 
make ourselves children of God by believing that we are so when 
we are not.' Sir, you and your readers will hardly believe me 
when I tell you that this is the exact and formal oi)i)Osition to 
what I say, that the words which he misquotes, by leavin^^ out the 
context and the note of interrogation, occur in a scornful reductio 



142 Charles Ki7zgsley. 

ad ahsiirdum of the very doctrine which he wantonly imputes to 
me, an appeal to common sense and logic against and not for the 
lie of the Genevan School. 1 have a right to use the word ' wan- 
tonly,' for he cannot say that he has misunderstood me ; he has 
refused to allow me that plea, and I refuse to allow it to him. In- 
deed, I cannot, for the passage is as plain as daylight, no school- 
boy could misunderstand it ; and every friend to whom 1 have 
shown his version of it has received it with the same laughter and 
indignation with which I did, and felt with me, that the only 
answer to be given to such dishonesty was that of Father Valerian, 
' Mentiris i7npudentissime! 

"2, So with the assertion, that the book 'regards the Cathohc 
doctrine of the Trinity as the same thing with that of the Vedas 
Neo-Platonists,' &c. &c. ; or considers 'a certain amount of youth- 
ful profligacy as doing no real and permanent harm to the charac- 
ter — perhaps strengthening it — for a useful and even religious life ; 
and that the existence of the passions is a proof that they are to 
be gratified.' Sir, I shall not quote passages in disproof of these 
calumnies, for if I did I should have to quote half the book. I 
shall simply reply, with Father Valerian, '■Mentiris impudentis- 
sime.' 

" I shall enter into no further defence of the book ; I have no 
doubt of there being many errors and defects in it. I shall be 
most thankful to have them pointed out, and to correct them most 
patiently. But one thing I may say, to save trouble hereafter, that 
whosoever henceforth, either explicitly or by insinuation, says that 
I do not hold and believe ex aiiinio, and in the simple and literal 
sense, all the doctrines of the Catholic and Apostohc Church of 
England, as embodied in her Liturgy or Articles, shall have no 
answer from me but Father Valerian's Mentiris impudentissime. 
"I am, Sir, 

" Your obedient and faithful servant, 

" The Author of ' Yeast.' " 

In speaking of this correspondence, Mr. Maurice says : 

"If / had been accused of profligacy and heresy, as Mr. Kings- 
ley has been in the ' Guardian,' I believe I should have felt much 
more indignation than he has, though I might have expressed it 
with less simplicity and brevity. If a man in a mask, calling him- 
self a 'We,' tells a clergyman that he has been all his hfe uttering 
a lie, that his whole professions before God and man are a lie, that 
he is an advocate for profligacy when he professes to make men 
moral, a deliberate teacher of heresy when he knows that his in- 
most desire is to preach the Catholic faith, and when he knows 
that he expresses that desire most loudly, not in the presence of 
dignitaries who might patronize him for it, but of infidels who 



Effect of ''Yeasty 143 

would desjjise him for it, it does not seem very strange that such 
a clergyman should say in Latin or English, Sir We ! thou thyself 
tellest a lie " 

Some may think it needless to revive these old controversies, 
but attacks on his moral teaching in this case, and at a later 
period on " Hypatia," implying as they did, a want of moral prin- 
ciple in himself, and the encouragement of it in others, touched 
, Mr. Kingsley on his tenderest point, and cannot be passed over, 
if only to show those who know what the results of his work ha?ve 
been, and have seen the different tone taken since by the religious 
press with regard to him and his writings, what sore battles he had 
at one time to fight, what bitter insults he had to stand, while 
laboring day and night for the good of others. But when once the 
moment and the expression of righteous indignation was over, he 
had a wonderful power of putting attacks and the individuals who 
made them, out of his mind, bearing no malice, and going on his 
way. " Life is too hard work in itself," he would say, " to let one 
stop to hate and suspect people." 

The " Guardian" replied again, reiterating its charges, but hap- 
pily there was another side to the question. Only three weeks 
before these attacks he had received the following among many 
other testimonies to the moral influence of " Yeast," on men 
whose hearts could not be touched by teachers of a narrower 
school : 

April 2, 1851. 
« Dear Sir, 

" I have just finished ' Yeast' 171 extenso, having only skimmed 
it in Fraser, and, fresh from the book, 1 cannot resist communi- 
cating to you my heartfelt thanks for it. You will not care about 
whether / thank you or not ; never mind, I shall relieve myself by 
writing, and you at any rate will not feel insulted. I believe you 
have taken up the right ground in standing firmly by the spirit of 
Christianity, and the divineness of Christ's' mission, and showing 
the people how they are their best friends and the truest reformers. 
I have been as far as most people into the Kingdom of the Ever- 
lasting No, and had nearly, in my intellectual misery, taken up 
with blank Atheism and the Reasoner ; and should have done so, 
had not my heart rebelled against my head, and flooding in upon 
me reflections of earlier, purer days, brighter days of Faith, bade 
me pause. For six months I have been looking back to Chris- 
tianity, my heart impelling me towards it ; my head urging me 



144 Charles Kings ley. 

into farther cimmerias. I wanted some authoritative word to 
confirm my heart, but could not meet with it. I read orthodox 
books of argument, of persuasion, of narrative, but I found they 
only increased my antagonism to Christianity. And I was very 
miserable — as I believe all earnest men must be when they find 
themselves God-abandoned in times like these — when, picking up 
your ' Christian Socialist,' I read your ' God justified to the 
People,' and felt that here now was a man, not a mere empty 
evangelical tub-thumper (as we of the North call Ranters), but a 
bona fide man, with a man's intellect, a man of genius, and a 
scholar, and yet who did not spit upon his Bible, or class it with 
Goethe and Dante, but could have sympathies with all the ferment 
of the age ; be a Radical Reformer without being a vague Denier, 
a vaguer * Spiritualist,' as our ' Leader ' friends have it, or an utter 
Atheist. If this man, on further acquaintance, prove what 1 sus- 
pect him to be, here is the confirmation I desire. Impelled by 
this, and by the accounts I gathered of you from Mr. and Mrs. 
Carlyle, I devoured 'Yeast;' and 'Alton Locke,' I am now in 
the middle of (I am no novel reader, which must be my excuse 
for being so late in the field). I find that I am quite correct, that 
I have not exaggerated your capacity at all ; and having, day and 
night, meditated on what you have to say, I feel that the con- 
firmation I have got from you is sufficient. But I have another 
better confirmation in my own heart. I feel as if I had emerged 
from a mephitic cavern into the open day. In the midst of worldly 
reverses, such as I never before experienced, I feel a mental 
serenity I never before knew ; can see life and my role in life, 
clear and definite for the first time, through all manner of inter- 
vening entanglements. 

" I know not by what right I make you my father confessor, but 
I feel strangely drawn towards you, and even at the risk of being 
deemed impertinent, must send this rambling missive to thank you 
and to bless you for having helped in the light and the leaven to a 
sad yeasty spirit hitherto. 



In the summer of 185 1 several London clergymen arranged to 
have courses of lectures speciall^y^ addressed to the working men, 
who came in numbers to see the Great Exhibition. One of these 
clergymen, whose church was in the neighborhood of a lecture- 
hall much frequented by working men of atheistic views, begged 
Mr. Maurice to take part in his course of lectures and (once more 
to quote Mr. Hughes's words) : 

" to ask Kingsley to do so also ; assuring Mr. Maurice that he 
'had been reading Kingsley' s works with the greatest interest, and 



Occurrence in a London C/inrc/i. 145 

earnestly desired to secure him as one of his lecturers.' ' I prom- 
ised to mention this request to him,' Mr. Maurice says, ' though I 
knew he rarely came to London, and seldom preached except in 
his own parish. He agreed, though at some inconvenience, that 
he would ]jreach a sermon on the Message of the Church to the 
Laboring Man. I suggested the subject to him. The incumbent 
intimated the most cordial approval of it. He had asked us, not 
only with a previous knowledge of our published writings, but 
expressly because he had that knowledge. I pledge you my word 
that no questions were asked as to what we were going to say, and 
no guarantees given. Mr. Kingsley took precisely that view of 
the message of the Church to laboring men which every reader of 
his books would have expected him to take.' 

"Kingsley took his text from Luke iv. verses 18 to 21 : 'The 
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to 
preach the gospel to the poor,' &c. What then was that gospel ? 
Kingsley starts at once with — ' I assert that the business for which 
God sends a Christian priest in a Christian nation is, to preach 
freedom, equality, and brotherhood, in the fullest, deepest, widest 
meaning of those three great words ; that in as far as he so does, 
he is a true priest, doing his Lord's work with His Lord's blessing 
on him ; that in as far as he does not he is no priest at all, but a 
traitor to God and man ; ' and again, ' I say that these words ex- 
press the very pith and marrow of a priest's business ; I say that 
they preach freedom, equality, and brotherhood, to rich and poor 
for ever and ever.' Then he goes on to warn his hearers how there 
IS always a counterfeit in this world of the noblest message and 
teaching. 

*' Thus there are two freedoms — the false, where a man is free to 
do what he likes ; the true, where a man is free to do what he 
ought. 

" Two equalities — the false, which reduces all intellects and all 
characters to a dead level, and gives the same power to the bad as 
to the good, to the wise as to the foolish, ending thus in practice 
in the grossest inequality; the true, wherein each man has equal 
power, to educate and use whatever faculties or talents God has 
given him, be they less or more. This is the divine equality 
which the church proclaims, '"'.d nothing else proclaims as she 
does. 

" Two brotherhoods — the false, where a man chooses who shall 
be his brothers, and whom he will treat as such ; the true, in which 
a man believes that all are his brothers, not by the will of the flesh, 
or the will of man, but by the will of God, whose children they 
all are aUke. The church has three special possessions and 
treasures. Tlie Bible, which proclaims man's freedom, Baptism 
his equal'*-', the Lord's Supper his brotherhood." — (Preface to 
'Alton 1 .ke'). 
10 



146 Charles Kings ley. 

The sermon was listened to with profound attention by a large 
congregation, in which were many working men. But at its close, 
just as the preacher was about to give the blessing, the incumbent 
rose in the reading-desk and declared, that while he agreed with 
nnich that had been said by the preacher, it was his painful duty 
.to add that he believed much to be dangerous and much untrue. 

The excitement of the congregation was intense ; the working 
men could with difificuly be kept quiet, and to a man of the 
preacher's vehement temperament it must have required a great 
effort not to reply. He only bowed his head, and with deepened 
solemnity came down from the pulpit, passed straight through the 
crowd that thronged him with outstretched hands, and an eager 
"God bless you, sir," on their lips, and went into the vestry, where 
his friends gathered round him to express their sympathy, and to 
take the sermon from him that it might be printed exactly as it was 
written. '-Those," said Mr. Maurice, "who observed the solem- 
nity of Mr. Kingsley's manner while he was delivering his sermon, 
still more when he was praying with the congregation, and blessing 
them, will believe that the thought of having unwittingly made 
himself a stumbling-block to his fellow-men, was infinitely more 
bitter to him than any mere personal insult which he was called 
upon to endure." 

" You will have heard ere this," writes a friend to Mrs. Kingsley 
the day following, " all about the strange event of last night. 

. Nothing could justify the violation of church order and de- 
cency which was committed Thank God, thank Him 

on your knees, that Charles did not answer a single word ; if he 
had, I do not know what might not have happened. Robertson 
and Hansard had severally to quiet knots of working men, who 
were beginning to hiss or otherwise testify their disapproval. A 
word from Charles, or, indeed, from any one on his behalf, might 
have raised such a storm as God only could have quelled. 

" What the consequences of the whole thing may be, none, I 
suppose, can tell ; but they are in God's hands, and He knows 
best, and makes all things work together for good for us if we truly 
fear Him. Charles, I think, feels that it is his only policy to keep 
quiet — and so must his friends for the present. Tell him old Lum- 
ley is showing himself a man, and will be extremely glad to i)ublish 
the sermon. . . . ." 

Mr. Kingsley returned to Eversley exhausted and depressed, and 
in the meantime the storm burst. A leading morning paper began 



Sympathy of Workiiig Men. 147 

the attack, with an article, which being full of inaccuracies, made 
its due impression on those who did not know the facts, and who 
were already strongly prejudiced against the " Apostle of Socialism." 

This was followed by a letter from the Bishop of I^ondon (Dr. 
Bloomfield), who hearing of the disturbance, wrote to Mr. Kingsley 
to express his displeasure, and forbade him to preach in London. 
Mr. Kingsley replied most respectfully, requesting his lordship to 
suspend his judgment till he had read the sermon. Meanwhile 
letters of sympathy poured in from all quarters, from a few of the 
clergy, from many of the laity, and from numbers of working 
men. There was a meeting of working men on Kennington Com- 
mon, and an expression of their warm allegiance and sympathy. 
A proposal was also made before the bishop's prohibition was with- 
drawn, to induce Mr. Kingsley to start a free church independent 
of episcopal rule, with a promise of a huge following. It is need- 
less to say he did not entertain this proposal for a moment. 

In the meantime the sermon was printed, and a copy sent to the 
Bishop, who wrote at once to ask Mr. Kingsley to come up and 
see him at London House ; and after a kind reception he withdrew 
his prohibition, and in a fortnight Mr. Kingsley preached at the 
parish church of Chelsea. 

Before the meeting on Kennington Common, the secretary of 
the John Street Lecture Hall, where the principal audience was 
composed of Chartists, free thinkers, and followers of Strauss, wrote 
to offer Mr. Kingsley the use of their lecture hall, which he de- 
clined in the following words : 

EvERSLEY, June 26, 1851. 

" I have conferred with my friends on their willingness to give 
lectures in John Street, and find it to be their unanimous opinion, 
that to do so, would be interpreted by the public into an approval, 
more or less, of other doctrines which are taught there, from which 
I, of all men in England, differ most strongly, and from which I 
hold myself bound most strongly to protest. 

"As a churchman, such a suspicion would be intolerable to me, 
as it would be gratuitously incurred. Those who wish to know my 
opinions will have plenty of opportunities elsewhere ; and I must 
therefore, in common with my friends, distinctly, but most cour- 
teously, decUne your kind offer of the John Street lecture rooms." 

He was so much exhausted with the work and the controversies 
of the last eight months, that his parents, who were going to Ger- 



148 Charles Kingsley. 

many for some weeks, seeing the importance of his having tho- 
rough change, persuaded him to leave his parish in the care of a 
curate and go abroad with them. It was the first time he had 
crossed the water, and it was quite a revelation to him, — to be 
enjoyed as thoroughly as he could enjoy any thing which took him 
from his home. But even in new scenes his fiery spirit could not 
rest ; and the cause of the Church and the People pressed heavily 
on him. 

TO HIS WIFE. 

Menderscheid, August 7. 

" I write from the loveliest place you can imagine, only how we 
got here I know not ; having lost our way between some 'feld' or 
other to here. We found ourselves about 8 p.m. last night at the 
top of a cliff 500 feet high, with a roaring river at the bottom, and 
710 path. So down the cliff face we had to come in the dark, or 
sleep in the forest to be eaten by wild boars and wolves, of which 
latter, one was seen on our route yesterday ' as high as a table.' 
And down we came, knapsacks, fishing-rods, and all ; which process 
must not be repeated often if we intend to revisit our native shores. 
I have seen such wonders, I don't know where to begin. Craters 
filled sometimes with ghastly blue lakes, with shores of volcanic 
dust, and sometimes, quaintly enough, by rye-fields and reapers. 
The roads are mended with lava ; the whole country the strangest 
jumble, alternations of Cambridgeshire ugliness (only lifted up 1,200 
feet high) with all the beauties of Devonshire. The bed of the 
Issbach, from the baths of Bertrich, up which we came yesterday, 
was the most ravishingly beautiful glen scenery I ever saw ; such 
rocks — such baths — such mountains covered with huge timber — 
not mere scrub, like the Rhine forests. Such strips of lawn here 
-and there between the stream and the wood. All this, of course, 
you get on a grander scale on the Moselle, which was perfectly 
exquisite ; yet there is a monotomy in its luxious richness and soft- 
ness, and I was right glad to find myself on my legs at Alf. Two 
days of that steamer running would have been too much for one, 
with its heat and confinement, so I think this plan of walking is the 
best. Weather glorious." 

Treves, Angzist 17. 

" Here we are at Treves, having been brought here under ar- 
rest, with a gensdarme from the Mayor of Bittsburg, and liberated 
next morning with much laughter and many curses from the police 
here. However, we had the pleasure of spending a night in pri- 
son, among fleas and felons, on the bare floor. It appears the 
barbarians took our fishing-rods for ' todt-instrumenten ' — deadly 



Arrested at Treves. 149 

weapons — and our wide-awakes for Italian hats, and got into their 
addle pates that we were emissaries of Mazzini and Co. distributing 
political tracts, for not a word of politics had we talked. Luckily 
the police-inspector here was a gentleman, and his wife and daugh- 
ter ladies, and they did all they dare for us, and so about ten next 
morning we were set free with many apologies, and the gensdarme 
(who, after all, poor fellow, was very civil) sent back to Bittsburg 
with a reprimand. We are the lions of Treves at present, for the 
affair has made a considerable fuss. We leave this to-morrow after 
having seen all the wonders — and what wondei^s there are to see. 
I need not tell you all I have felt here and at Fleissem. But at 
first the feeling that one is standing over the skeleton of the giant 
iniquity — Old Rome — is overpowering. And as I stood last night 
in that amphitheatre, amid the wild beasts' dens, and thought of 
the Christian martyrdoms and the Frank prisoners, and all the hell- 
ish scenes of agony and cruelty that place had witnessed, I seemed 
to hear the very voice of the Archangel whom St. John heard in Pat- 
mos, crying, ' Babylon the Great is fallen ; ' but no more like the 
sound of a trumpet, but only in the still whisper of the night breeze, 
and through the sleeping vmeyards, and the great still smile of God 
out of the broad blue heaven. Ah ! and you were not there to 
feel it with me ! I am so longing to be home ! " 

Before going abroad, he had parted with the beloved pupil who 
had become quite one of the family at the Rectory, and was dear 
to him and his wife as a son. Mr. John Martineau's graphic words 
and tender recollections of the eighteen months he spent at Evers- 
ley, give the best picture of the home life at that period, between 
January 21, 1850, and June 28, "851. 

Park Corner, YIy.ck.^iyaX), Christmas Eve, 1875. 

" I first knew him in January, 1850. I entered his house as his 
pupil, and was for nearly a year and a half his constant companion ; 
indeed, out of doors, almost his only companion, for during the 
greater part of the time he had no other pupil, and hardly any inti- 
mate friends within reach. He was then in his thirty-first year, in 
the fulness of his strength ; I a raw receptive school-boy of fifteen ; 
so that his mind and character left their impression upon mine as 
a seal does upon wax. What that impression was I will put down 
as best I can. 

"He was then, above all things and before all things else, a 
parish clergyman. His parish work was not indeed so laborious 
and absorbing as it had been six years before, when he was first 
made Rector. The efforts of these six years had told, the seed 
was bearing fruit, and Eversley would never again be as it had 



150 Charles Kingsley. 

been. His health had nearly broken down not long before, and he 
had now a curate to help him, and give him the leisure which he 
needed for writing and other things. Still, even so, with a large 
and straggling though not very populous parish, with his share of 
three services on Sunday and cottage-lectures on two week-day 
evenings in winter, there was much for him to do ; throwing him- 
self into it, as he did, with all his intensity and keen sense of 
responsibility. At this time, too, he had not, as in later years, the 
help and the purses of laymen to assist him. 

"These were the days when farm-laborers in Hampshire got 
from eight to ten shillings a week, and bread was dear, or had not 
long ceased to be so. The cholera of 1849 had just swept through 
the country, and though it had not reached Eversley, a severe kind 
of low fever had, and there had been a season of much illness and 
many deaths, during which he had, by his constant, anxious, tender 
care of the sick poor, won their confidence more than ever before. 
The poor will not go to the relieving officer if they can get their needs 
supplied elsewhere ; and the Eversley poor used to go for relief, 
and something more than relief, to the Rectory. There were few 
mornings, at that time, that did not bring some one in distress, 
some feeble woman, or ailing child, or a summons to a sick bed. 
Up to that time he had allowed (I believe) no man or woman in 
his parish to become an inmate of the work-house through infirmity 
or old age, except in a few cases were want had been the direct 
consequence of indolence or crime. 

" At times, too, other poor besides those of his parish, might be 
seen at his door. Gipsies were attracted to him from all the 
country round. He married and christened many of them, to 
whom such rites were things almost unknown. 

" I cannot give any description of his daily life, his parish 
work, which will not sound couimonplace. There were the morn- 
ings chiefly spent in reading and writing, the afternoons in going 
from cottage to cottage, the long evenings in writing. It sounds 
monotonous enough. But there never was a man with whom life 
was less monotonous, with whom it was more full to overflowing, 
of variety, and freshness. Nothing could be so exquisitely delight- 
ful as a walk with him about his parish. Earth, air, and water, as 
well as farm-house and cottage, seemed full of his familiar friends. 
By day and by night, in fair weather and in storm, grateful for 
heat and cold, rain and sunshine, light and soothing darkness, he 
drank in nature. It seemed as if no bird, or beast, or insect, 
scarcely a drifting cloud in the sky, passed by him unnoticed, un- 
welcomed. He caught and noted every breath, every sound, 
every sign. With every person he met he instinctively struck some 
point of contact, found something to appreciate — often, it might 
be, some information to ask for — which left the other cheered, 
self-respecting, raised for the moment above himself; and whatever 



Letter from Mr. John MartiJieau. 151 

the passing word might be, it was given to high or low, gentle or 
simple, with an appropriateness, a force, and a genial courtesy, in 
the case of all women, a deferential courtesy, which threw its spell 
over all alike, a spell which few could resist. 

" So many-sided was he that he seemed to unite in himself more 
types and varieties of rnind and character, types differing as widely 
as the poet from the man of science, or the mystic from the soldier ; 
to be tilled with more thoughts, hopes, fears, interests, aspirations, 
temptations than could co-exist in any one man, all subdued or 
clenched into union and harmony by the force of one iron will, 
which had learnt to rule after many a fierce and bitter struggle. 

" His senses were acute to an almost painful degree. The sight 
of suffering, the foul scent of a sick-room — well used as he was to 
both— would haunt him for hours. For with all his man's strength 
there was a deep vein of woinafi in him, a nervous sensitiveness, an 
intensity of sympathy, which made him suffer when others suffered, 
a tender, delicate, soothing touch, which gave him power to under- 
stand and reach the heart ; to call out, sometimes at first sight 
(^what he of all men least sought), the inmost confidences of men 
and women alike in all classes of life. And he had sympathy with 
all moods from deepest grief to lightest humor — for no man had a 
keener, quicker perception of the humorous side of anything — a 
love and ready word of praise for whatever was good or beautiful, 
from the greatest to the least, from the heroism of the martyr to tlie 
shape of a good horse, or the folds of a graceful dress. And this 
wide-reaching hearty a]ipreciation made a word of praise from him 
sweeter, to those who knew him well, than volumes of commenda- 
tion from all the world besides. 

" His every thought and word was penetrated with the belief, 
the full assurance, that the world — the world of the soldier or the 
sportsman, as well as the world of the student or the theologian — • 
was God's world, and that everything which He had made was 
good. ' Humani nihil a me alienum puto,' he said, taught by his 
wide human sympathies, and encouraged by his faith m the Incar- 
nation. And so he rejected, as Pharisaic and unchristian, most of 
what is generally implied in the use of such words as ' carnal,' 
'unconverted,' 'worldly,' and thereby embraced in his sympathy, 
and won to faith and hope, many a struggling soul, many a bruised 
reed, whom the narrow and exclusive ignorance of schools and 
religionists had rejected. 

"No human being but was sure of a patient, interested hearer in 
him. 1 have seen him seat himself, hatless, beside a tramp on the 
grass outside his gate in his eagerness to catch exactly what he had 
to say, searching him, as they sate, in his keen kindly way with 
question and look. With as great a horror of paui)erism and alms- 
giving as any professed political economist, it was in practice very 
hard to him to icfuse any one. The sight of unmistakable misery, 



152 Charles Kings ley. 

however caused, covered to him, the multitude of sins. I recollect 
his passing" backwarJs and forwards again and again — the strong 
impulsive will for once irresolute — between the breakfast-room and 
a miserable crying woman outside, and 1 cannot forget, though 
twenty-five years have passed since, the unutterable look of pain 
and disgust with which, when he had decided to refuse the request, 
he said, ' Look there ! ' as he pointed to his own well-furnished 
table. 

" Nothing roused him to anger so much as cant. Once a 
scoundrel, on being refused, and thinking that at a parsonage and 
with a parson it would be a successful trick, fell on his knees on 
the door-step, turned up the whites of his eyes and began the dis- 
gusting counterfeit of a prayer. In an instant the man found him- 
self, to his astonishment, seized by collar and wrist, and being 
swiftly thrust towards the gate, with a firm grip and a shake that 
deprived him of all inclination to resist, or, till he found himself 
safe outside it, even to remonstrate. 

'■'■ He had at that time great physical strength and activity, and 
an impetuous, restless, nervous energy, which I have never seen 
equalled. All his strength, physical, mental, and moral, seemed 
to find expression in his keen grey eyes, which gazed, with the look 
of an eagle, from under massive brows, divided from each other by 
two deep perpendicular furrows — at that time, together with the 
two equally deep lines from nostril to mouth, very marked features 
in his face. One day, in a neighbors yard, a large savage dog flew 
out at him, straining at its chain. He walked up to it, scolding it, 
and by mere force of eye, voice, and gesture, drove it into its 
kennel, close to which he stopped, keeping his eye on the cowed 
animal, as it growled and moved uneasily from side to side. He 
had done the same thing often before, and had even pulled an in- 
furiated dog out of its kennel by its chain, after having driven it in. 

" By boyish habits and tastes a keen sportsman, the only sport 
he ever enjoyed at this time was an occasional day's trout or pike 
fishuig, or throwing a fly for an hour or two during his afternoon's 
•walk over the little stream that bounded his parish. Hunting he 
had none. And in later years, when he did hunt occasionally, it 
was generally a matter of two or three hours on an old horse, taken 
as a relaxation in, the midst of work, not, as with most other men, 
as a day's work in itself Fond as he was of horses, he never in 
his life had one worth fifty pounds, so little self-indulgent was he. 
He never then, or afterwards — so far as I know — went out shoot- 

"Though exercising intense self control, he was very restless and 
excitable. Constant movement was a relief and almost a necessity ' 
to him. His study opened by a door of its own upon the garden, 
and most of his sermons and books were thought out and composed 
as he paced up and down there, at all hours and in all weathers, 



Mr. Maurice. 153 

his hands behind his back, generally smoking a long clay pipe ; for 
tobacco had, as he found by experience — having once tried a year's 
total abstinence from it — an especially soothing beneficial effect 
upon him. He ate hurriedly, and it was an effort to him to sit still 
through a meal. His coat frequently had a white line across the 
back, made by his habit of leaning against the whitened chimney- 
piece of the dining-room during breakfast and dinner. Once in the 
long summer days we were condemned to a more than usually dull 
dinner-party at a neighbor's house, where the only congenial person 
was a young scientific doctor from the next parish. After dinner, 
it being broad daylight, we were all in the garden, and opposite to 
us were two high thick-foliaged trees. I do not know which of 
the two suggested it, but in an instant his coat and the doctor's 
were off, and they were racing each other, each up his tree, like 
schoolboys, one gettmg first to the top, the other first down again 
to the ground. 

"Of society he had then very little, and it was rarely and un- 
willingly that he passed an evening away from home. He did not 
seek it, and it had not yet begun to seek him. Indeed, at no time 
was general society a congenial element to him j and those who 
knew him only thus, did not know him at his best. A few intimate 
friends, and now and then a stranger, seeking his advice on some 
matter, would come for a night or a Sunday. Amongst the former, 
and honored above all, was Mr. Maurice. One of his visits hap- 
pened at a time when we had been startled by a burglary and 
murder at a parsonage a few miles off, and had armed ourselves 
and barricaded the rambling old Rectory in case of an attack. In 
the middle of the night an attempt was made to force open the 
back door, which roused us all, and we rushed down stairs with 
pistols, gunSj and blunderbuss, to expel the thieves, who, however, 
had taken alarm and made off. Mr. Maurice, the only unarmed 
and the coolest man amongst us, was quietly going out alone, in 
the pitch darkness, into the garden in pursuit of them, when Mr. 
Kingsley fortunately came upon him and stopped him ; and the 
two passed the rest of the night together talking over the study-fire 
till morning came. 

" Many a one has cause to remember that Study, its lattice 
window (in later years altered to a bay), its great heavy door, 
studded with large projecting nails, opening upon the garden ; its 
brick floor covered with matting ; its shelves of heavy old folios, 
with a fishing-rod, or landing-net, or insect-net leaning against 
them ; on the table, books, writing materials, sermons, manuscript, 
proofs, letters, reels, feathers, fishing-flies, clay-pipes, tobacco. On 
the mat, perhaps — the brown eyes, set in thick yellow hair, and 
gently-agitated tail, asking indulgence for the intrusion — a long- 
bodied, short-legged Dandy Dinmont Scotch terrier, wisest, hand- 
somest, most faithfiil, most memorable of its race. When the rest 



154 Charles Kingsley. 

of the household went to bed, he would ask his guest in, ostensibly 
to smoke. The swing-door would be flung open and slam heavily 
after him, as it al\va3^s did, for he would never stop to catch and 
close it. And then in the quiet of night, when no fresh face could 
come, no interruption occur to distract him, he would give himself 
wholly to his guest, taking up whatever topic the latter might sug- 
gest, whatever question he might ask, and pouring out from the 
full stores of his knowledge, his quick intuitive sagacity, his ready 
sympathy. Then it was, far more than in the excitement and dis- 
traction of many voices and many faces, that he was himself, that 
the true man appeared ; and it was at times such as these that he 
came to be known and trusted and loved, as few men ever have 
been, as no man has been whom I ever knew. 

" He had to a wonderful degree the power of abstraction and 
concentration, which enabled him to arrange and elaborate a whole 
sermon, or a chapter of a book, while walking, riding, or even fly- 
fishing, without making a note, so as to be able on his return to 
write or dictate it in clear terse language as fast as pen could move. 
He would read a book and grasp its essential part thoroughly in a 
time so short that it seemed impossible that his eyes could have 
traversed its pages. Compared with other men who have written 
or thought much, he worked for a few hours in the day, and with- 
out much system or regularity ; but his application was so intense 
that the strain upon his vital powers was very great. Nor when he 
ceased could his brain rest. Except during sleep, — and even that 
was characteristic, so profound was it, — repose seemed impossible 
to him for body or mind. So that he seemed to live three days, as 
it were, while other men were living one, and already foresaw that 
there would be for him no great length of years. 

" Connected with this rapid living was a certain impatience of 
trifles, an inaccuracy about details, a haste in drawing conclusions, 
a forgetfulness of times and seasons, and of words lightly spoken 
or written, and withal an impulsive and almost reckless generosity, 
and fear of giving pain, which sometimes placed him at an unfair 
disadvantage and put him formally in the wrong when substantially 
he was in the right. It led him, too, to take too hastily a favor- 
able estimate of almost every one with whom he came personally 
into contact, so that he was liable to suffer from misplaced con- 
fidence ; while in the petty matters of daily life it made him a bad 
guardian of his own interests, and but for the wise and tender 
assistance that was ever at his side would almost have overwhelmed 
him with anxieties. 

" In the pulpit, and even at his week-day cottage-lectures, where, 
from the population of his parish being so scattered, he had some- 
times scarcely a dozen hearers, he was at that time eloquent be- 
yond any man I ever heard. For he had the two essential con- 
stituents of eloquence, a strong man's intensity and clearness of 



Hesitatiofi in Speech. 155 

conviction, and a command of words, not easy or rapid, but sure 
and unhesitating, an unfailing instinct for the one word, the most 
concrete and pictorial, the strongest and the simplest, which 
expressed Jiis thought exactly. 

''Many have since then become familiar with his preaching, 
many more with his published sermons, but few comparatively can 
know what it was to hear him, Sunda)^ after Sunday, in his own 
church and among his own people, not preach only, but read, or 
rather pray, the prayers of the Church-service. vSo completely was 
he in harmony with these prayers, so fully did they satisfy him, that 
with all his exuberance of thought and imagination, it seemed as if 
for him there was nothing to be asked for beyond what they asked 
for. So that in his cottage-lectures, as in his own household wor- 
ship, where he was absolutely free to use any words he chose, I 
scarcely ever heard him use a word of prayer other than the words 
of the Prayer-book. 

" In conversation he had a painful hesitation in his speech, which 
diminished as he got older, though it never wholly left him. Bat 
in preaching, and in speaking with a set purpose, he was wholly 
free from it. He used to say that he could speak for God but not 
for himself, and took the trial — and to his keenly sensitive nature it 
was no small one, — patiently and even thankfully, as having by 
God's mercy saved him from many a temptation to mere brilliancy 
and self-seeking. The successful effort to overcome this difficulty 
increased instead of diminishing the impressiveness of his voice, 
for to it was partly due the strange, rich, high-pitched, musical 
monotone in which he prayed and preached, the echo of which, as 
it filled his church, or came borne on the air through the open 
window of a sick room, seems to travel over the long past years 
and kindle his words afresh, as I read them in the cold dead page. 

" And as it was an unspeakable blessing to Eversley to nave him 
for its Rector, so also it was an inestimable benefit to him to have 
had so early in life a definite work to do which gave to his generous 
sympathetic impulses abundant objects and responsibilities and a 
clear purpose and direction. Conscious, too, as he could not but 
be, of great powers, and impatient of dictation or control, the 
repose and isolation of a country parish afforded him the best and 
healthiest opportunities of development, and full liberty of thought 
and speech, with sufficient leisure for reading and study. 

" Great as was his love of natural science, in so many of its 
branches, his genius was essentially that of a poet. Often a time 
of trouble and sadness — and there was in him a strong undercurrent 
of sadness at all times, — would result in the birth of a lyrical poem 
or song, on a subject wholly unconnected with that which occupied 
him, the production of which gave him evident relief, as though in 
some mysterious way his mind was thereby disburdened and set free 
for the reception of uew thoughts and impressions. In June, 1851, 



156 Charles Kingsley. 

he preached a powerful sermon to working men in a London 
church. No sooner had he finished it than the incumbent who 
had asked him to preach, rose in the reading-desk and denounced 
it. It was a painful scene, which narrowly escaped ending in a 
riot, and he felt keenly — not the insult to himself — but the dis- 
credit and scandal to the Church, the estrangement that it would 
be likely to increase between the clergy and the working men. He 
came home the day after, wearied and worn out, obliged to stop 
to rest and refresh himself at a house in his parish during his after- 
noon's walk. That same evening he brought in a song that he had 
written, the ' Three Fishers,' as though it were the outcome of it 
all ; and then he seemed able to put the matter aside, and the 
current of his daily life flowed as before. 

" Not that he at this time — or indeed at any time — wrote micch 
verse. Considering that what the world needed vvas not verse, 
however good, so much as sound knowledge, sound reasoning, 
sound faith, and above all, as the fruit and evidence of the last, 
sound morality, he did not give free rein to his poetical faculty, 
but sought to make it his servant, not his master, to use it to 
illuminate and fix the eyes of men on the truths of science, of 
social relationship, of theology, of morality. His books — and they 
are many — are the living witnesses of the fruit of these efforts, of 
the many purposes, the varied subjects, on which he employed the 
gift that was in him. The letters which he received in countless 
numbers, often from utter strangers who knew nothing of him but 
from his books, seeking counsel on the most delicate and important 
matters of life, testify how great a gift it was, how truly and 
telhngly it was used. 

"In reading all his writings, on whatever subject, it must not be 
forgotten that he was a poet, — that he could not help think:'ng, 
feeling, and writing as a poet. Patience, industry, a memory for 
detail, he had, even logical and inductive power of a certain in- 
tuitive intermittent kind, not sustained, indeed, or always reliable, 
for his was not a logical, or in details an accurate mind, and surface 
inconsistencies are not hard to find in his writings ; but as a poet, 
even if he saw all sides, he could not express them all at once. 
The very keenness of his sympathy, the intensity with which he 
realized all that was passing around him, made it impossible for 
him to maintain the calm unruffled judgment of men of a less fiery 
temperament, or to abstract and devote himself to the pursuit of 
any one branch of study without being constantly distracted from it 
and urged in some new direction by the joys and sorrows of the 
surging world around, to seek if by any means he might find a 
medicine to heal its sickness. 

" Hence it may, perhaps, be that another generation will not 
fully realize the wide-spread influence, the great power, he exer- 
cised through his writings. For, in a sense, it may be said that, as 



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A Radical and Chartist. 157 

to some of thein, not their least merit is that in part they will not 
live, except as the seed lives in the corn which grows, or water in 
the plant which it has revived. For their power often lay mainly 
in the direction of their aim at the special need of the hour, the 
memory of which has passed, or will pass, away. As his ' Master,' 
as he affectionately and humbly called Mr. Maurice, was a theo- 
logian, and, in its original sense, a ' Prophet,' so Mr. Kingsley, as 
Piiest and Poet, gloried in interpreting, expanding, applying him. 
' 1 think this Avill explain a good deal of Maurice,' was the single 
remark I heard him make when he had completed 'Yeast.' 

" In later years, as his experience widened, his judgment ripened, 
his conclusions were more calmly formed. But his genius was 
essentially of a kind that conies to maturity early, when the imagi- 
nation is still vivid, the pulses of life beat fastest, and the sym- 
pathies and affections are most passionately intense. And I 
venture to think that these comparatively early years were amongst 
the best of his life, best in all senses. It was at this time, the first 
half of the year 1850, that he completed 'Alton Locke,' which, 
containing though it may more faults, sweeping accusations, hasty 
conclusions, than any of his writings, is nevertheless his noblest 
and most characteristic book — at once his greatest poem and his 
grandest sermon. 

" With the great outside world, with the world of politicians and 
the press, and still more with the religious world, so called, as 
represented by the religious newspapers, he was in those years at 
open war. Popular as he afterwards became, it is difficult now to 
realize how great was the suspicion, how bitter the attacks, 
especially from the religious newspapers, which his books and 
sermons drew down upon him. Not that he in general cared much 
for praise or blame from the newspaper press, so venal and un- 
principled did he — not without reason — consider most of it, Whig, 
Tory, Radical, and religious. At that time he did not take in or 
read any daily paper. The Spectator, then edited by Mr. Rintoul, 
and with Mr. Brimley for its chief critic, was almost his only source 
of news. 

" It was then about two years after the events of 1848, and for 
him the one all-important and absorbing question of Politics was 
the condition, physical and mental, of the working-classes and the 
poor in town and country. On that question he considered that 
all the leading parties of the legislature had alike shown themselves 
indifferent and incapable. This conviction, and a deep sympathy 
with the suffering poor, had made him a Radical. Nay, on at least 
one occasion, he publicly and deliberatety declared himself a 
Chartist — a name which then meant a great deal,-^and for a clergy- 
man to do this was an act the boldness of which it is difficult to 
appreciate now. 

" So vividly did he realize the sufferings of the poor, so keenly 



158 Charles Kings ley. 

did he feel what he deemed the callousness and the incompetence 
of the Government to alleviate them, and the mass of the upper 
and middle classes, that at times he seemed to look, with trembling, 
for the coming of great and terrible social convulsions, of a • day of 
the Lord,' such as Isaiah looked for, as the inevitable fate of a 
world grown evil, yet governed still by a righteous God. In later 
years this feeling gradually left him — alread}', perhaps, it was 
beginning to fade. But it was no mere pulpit or poetic gust. It 
penetrated (I think) occasionally even to the lesser matters of 
daily life. Late one dark night he called me out to him into the 
garden to listen to a distant sound, which he told me was a fox's 
bark, bidding me to remember it, for foxes might soon cease to 
be in England, and I might never hear one bark again. 

" This phase of his life has been described by one who knew it 
in an earlier stage, and far better than I. I will only say that, 
looking back upon his daily life and conversation at that time, I 
believe he was democratic in his opinions rather than in his instincts, 
more by force of conviction than by natural incHnation. A doc- 
trinaire, or a lover of change for the sake of change, he never was ; 
and when he advocated democratic measures, it was more as a 
means to an end than because he altogether liked the means. From 
the pulpit, and with his pen, he claimed brotherhood with all men. 
No man in his daily intercourse respected with more scrupulous cour- 
tesy the rights, the dignity of the humblest. But he instinctively dis- 
liked a 'beggar on horseback.' Noblesse oblige^ the true principle 
of feudalism, is a precept which shines out conspicuously in all his 
books, in all his teaching, at this period of his life, as at all others. 

"In later years his convictions became more in accord with this 
natural tendency of his mind, and he gradually modified or aban- 
doned his democratic opinions, thereby, of course, di^awing down 
upon himself the reproach of inconsistency from those who con- 
sidered that he had deserted them. To me, looking back at what 
he was when he wrote ' Yeast,' and ' Alton Locke,' the change 
seems rather the natural development of his mind and character 
under more or less altered circumstances, partly because he saw 
the world about him really improving, partly because by experience 
he found society and other existing institutions more full of healthy 
life, more available as instruments of good, more willing to be 
taught, than he had formerly thought. 

" pjut, at that time, in his books and pamphlets, and often in 
his daily familiar speech, he was pouring out the whole force of his 
eager, passionate heart, in wrath and indignation, against starva- 
tion wages, stifling workshops, reeking alleys, careless landlords, 
roofless and crowded cottages, hard and canting religion. His 
'Poacher's Widow' is a piercing, heart-rending cry to heaven for 
vengeance against the oppressor. ' Thera is a righteous God,' is 
its burthen, ' and such things cannot and shall not, remain to de- 



The Bristol Riots. 159 

face the world which He has made. Laws, constitutions, cliurches, 
are none of His if they tolerate such ; they are accursed, and 
they uuist perish — destroy what they may in their fall. Nay, they 
will perish in their own corruption.' 

" One day, as he was reading with me, something led him to tell 
me of the Bristol Riots of 1832. He was in that year a schoolboy 
of thirteen, at Bristol, and had shpped away, fascinated by the 
tumult and the horror, into the midst of it. He described — rap- 
idly pacing up and down the room, and, with glowing, saddened 
face, as though the sight were still before his eyes, — the brave, 
patient soldiers sitting hour after hour motionless on their horses, 
the blood streaming from wounds on their heads and faces, wait- 
ing for the order which the miserable, terrified Mayor had not 
courage to give ; the savage, brutal, hideous mob of inhuman 
wretches plundering, destroying, burning ; casks of spirits broken 
open and set flowing in the streets, the wretched creatures drink- 
ing it on their knees from the gutter, till the flame from a burning 
house caught the stream, ran down it with a horrible rushing sound, 
and, in one dreadful moment, the prostrate drunkards had become 
a row of blackened corpses. Lastly, he spoke of the shameless- 
ness and the impunity of the guilty ; the persecution and the 
suicide of the innocent. 

"'That sight,' he said, suddenly turning to me, 'made me a 
Radical.' 

'' 'Whose fault is it,' I ventured to ask, ' that such things can be ? ' 

" ' Mine,' he said, ' and yours.' 

" I understood partly then, I have understood better since, 
what his Radicalism Avas. 

" From his home lile I scarcely dare, even for a moment, try to 
lift the veil. I will only say that having had the priceless blessing 
of admission to it, the daily sight of him in the closets of his home 
relations has left me a deeper debt of gratitude, and more precious 
memories, created higher hopes and a higher ideal, than all other 
manifestations combined of his character and intellect. To his 
wife — so he never shrank from, affirming in deep and humble 
thankfulness — he owed the whole tenor of his life, all that he had 
worth living for. It was true. And his every word and look, and 
gesture of chivalrous devotion for more than thirty years, seemed 
to show that the sense of boundless gratitude had become part of 
his nature, was never out of the undercurrent of his thoughts. 
Little thinking that he was to be taken first, and with a prospect 
of a long agony of loneliness imminent from hour to hour, the last 
flash of genius from his breaking heart was to gather into three 
sim])le, pregnant words, as a last oft'ering to her, the whole story 
of his life, of the Faith he preached and lived in, of his marriage, 
blessed, and yet to be blessed. He was spared that agony. Over 
his giave first arc written his words, 

'Amavimus, ainamus, amabimus. '" 



CHAPTER XL 
1852. 

Aged s^. 

Strike in the Iron-Trade — Correspondence on Social and Metaphysical Ques- 
tions — Mr. Erskine comes to Fir Grove — Parson Lot's last Words — Birth of 
his youngest Daughter — Letter from Frederika Bremer. 

The short holiday of the past year had so far invigorated Charles 
Kingsley that he worked without a curate for a time. The literary 
work was hampered by the lieavy correspondence, principally with 
strangers, who little knew what labor each letter cost him. Of 
one very valuable series of letters with the son of a clergyman, a 
young man of atheistical opinions, connected with the " Reasoner," 
/^/ewspaper, and who eventually died a professing Christian, only 
tw^, letters are preserved, the rest having been by the will of their 
owner destroyed at his death, as referring to a phase in his life 
which it would be painful to his family to recall. Another series, 
to Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, though spread over this and 
several years, will be given together in a later chapter. His liter- 
ary work consisted of " Hypatia," now coming out monthly in 
''Eraser's Magazine;" "Phaeton," and a reply to an attack on 
Christian Socialism in " Eraser's Magazine," which was not in- 
serted. In the summer he amused himself by trying his hand at 
hexameters, and began the poem of " Andromeda." His parish 
work prevented his helping personally in the Co-operative Move- 
ment in London ; but he was consulted from time to time by the 
Council of Promoters, and in the great lock-out of the Iron Trade 
in January he wrote to explain his views on the matter. This let- 
ter " will show," as Mr. Hughes truly says, " how far Kingsley was 
an encourager of ' violent measures or views.' " 

TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ. 

EvERSLEY, January 28, 1852. 

" You may have been surprised at my having taken no part in 
this Amalgamated Iron Trades' matter. And I think that I am 



Masters and Men. i6i 

bound to say why I have not, and how far I wish my friends to 
interfere in it. 

" I do think that we, the Council of Promoters, shall not be 
wise in interfering between masters and men ; because — i. I 
question whether the points at issue between them can be fairly 
understood by any person not conversant with the practical de- 
tails of the trade 

"2. Nor do I think they have put their case as well as they 
might. For instance, if it be true that they themselves have in- 
vented many, or most, of the improvements in their tools and ma- 
chinery, they have an argument in favor of keeping out unskilled 
laborers, which is unanswerable, and yet what they have never 
used — viz. : 'Your masters make hundreds and thousands by these 
improvements, Avhile we have no remuneration for this inventive 
talent of ours, but rather lose by it, because it makes the introduc- 
tion of unskilled labor more easy. Therefore the only way in 
which we can get anything like a payment for this inventive faculty 
of which we make you a present over and above our skilled labor, 
for which you bargained, is to demand that we, who invent the 
machines, if we cannot have a share in the profits of them, shall 
at least have the exclusive privilege of using them, instead of their 
being, as now, turned against us.' That, I think, is a fair argu- 
ment ; but 1 have seen nothing of it from any speaker or writer. 

" 3. I think whatever battle is fought, must be fouglit by "tlie 
men themselves. The present dodge of the Manchester school is 
to cry out against us, as Greg did, ' These Christian Socialists are 
a set of mediaeval parsons, who want to hinder the independence 
and self-help of the men, and bring them back to absolute feudal 
maxims ; and then, with the most absurd inconsistency, when we 
get up a Co-operative workshop, to let the men work on the very 
independence and self-help of which they talk so fine, they turn 
round and raise just the opposite yell, and cry, 'The men can't be 
independent of capitalists ; these associations will fail because the 
men are helping themselves' — showing that what they mean is, 
that the men shall be independent of every one but themselves — 
independent of legislators, parsons, advisers, gentlemen, noblemen, 
and every one that tries to help them by moral agents ; but the 
slaves of the capitalists, bound'to them by a servitude increasing 
instead of lightening with their numbers. Now, the only way in 
which we can clear the cause of this calumny, is to let the men 
fight their own battle ; to prevent any one saying, ' These men are 
the tools of dreamers and fanatics,' which would be just as ruin- 
ously blackening to them in the public eyes, as it would be to let 
the cry get abroad, ' This is a Socialist movement, destructive of 
rights of property, Conmiunism, Louis Blanc, and the devil, &c.' 
You know the infernal stuff which the devil gets up on such 
occasions — having no scruples about calling himself hard names 
II 



1 62 Charles Kings ley. 

■ when it suits his purpose, to blind and frighten respectable old 
women. 

" Moreover, these men are not poor distressed needle-women 
or slop-workers. They are the most intelligent and best educated 
workmen, receiving incomes often higher than a gentleman's son 
whose education has cost looo/. ; and if they can't fight their own 
battles, no men in England can, and the people are not ripe for 
association, and we must hark back into the competitive rot heap 
again. All, then, that we can do is, to give advice when asked — 
to see that they have, as far as we can get at them, a clear stage 
and no favor, but not by pubhc, but by private influence. 

" But we can help them in another way by showing them the 
way to associate. That is quite a distinct question from their quar- 
rel with their masters, and we shall be very foolish if we give the 
press a handle for mixing up the two. We have a right to say to 
masters, men, and public, ' We know, and care nothing about the 
iron strike. Here are a body of men coming to us, wishing to be 
shown how to do that which is a right thing for them to do — well 
or ill off, strike or no strike, namely, associate ; and we will help 
and teach them to do that to the very utmost of our power.' 

"The Iron Workers' co-operative shops will be watched with 
lynx eyes, calumniated shamelessly. Our business will be to tell 
the truth about them, and fight manfully with our pens for them. 
But we shall never be able to get the ears of the respectabilities 
and the capitalists, if we appear at this stage of the business. What 
we must say is, ' If you are needy and enslaved, we will fight for 
you fiom pity, whether you be associated or competitive. But you 
are neither needy, nor, unless you choose, enslaved ; and therefore 
we will only fight for you in proportion as you become associates. 
Do that, and see if we can't stand hard knocks for your sake.' " 

We now come to the more private correspondence of the year. 

TO » , ESQ.* 

EvERSLEY, Whit Tuesday, 1852. 

"My Dear Mr. , 

" Sad as your letter was, it gave me much pleasure : it is al- 
ways a pleasure to see life springing out of death — health returning 
after disease, though, as doctors know, the recovery from asphyxia 
or drowning is always as painful as the temporary death itself was 

painless P'aith is born of doubt. 'It is not life but 

death where nothing stirs.' I take all these struggles of yours 

* A young man of nineteen, to whom he was personally a stranger, but who 
wrote to him laying bare his whole heart, having woke up from a course of sin 
and unbelief in black despair. 



Sympathy with Young Men. 163 

as simply so many signs that your Father in heaven is treating you 
as a father, that He has not forsaken you, is not offended with you, 
but is teaching you in the way best suited to your own idiosyn- 
crasy, the great lesson of lessons. ' Empty thyself, and God will 
fill thee.' 1 am not a man of a mystical or romantic turn of mind; 
but I do say and know, both from reason and experience, that we 
must be taught, even though it be by being allowed for awhile to 
make beasts of ourselves, that we are of ourselves, and in our- 
selves, nothing better than — as you see in the savage — a sort of 
magnified beast of prey, all the more terrible for its wondrous fa- 
culties ; that neither intellect nor strength of will can save us from 
degradation ; that they may be just as powerful for evil as for 
good ; and that what we want to make us true men^ over and 
above that which we bring into the world with us, is some sort of 
Godgiven instinct, motive, and new principle of fife in us, which 
shall make us not only see the right, and the true, and the noble, 
but love it, and give up our wills and hearts to it, and find in the 
confession of our own weakness a strength, in the subjection of 
our own will a freedom, in the utter carelessness about self a self- 
respect, such as we have never known before. 

"Do not — do not fancy that any confession of yours to me can 
lower you in my eyes. My dear young man, I went through the 
same devil's sewer, with a thousand times the teaching and advan- 
tages which you have had. Who am I, of all men, to throw stones 
at you ? But take your sorrows, not to me, but to your Father in 
heaven. If that name. Father, mean anything, it must mean that 
He will not turn away from His wandering child, in a way in which 
you would be ashamed to turn away from yours. If there be pity, 
lasting aff"ection, patience in man, they must have come from 
Him. They, above all things, must be His likeness. Believe 
that He possesses them a million times more fully than any human 
being. 

"St. Paul knew well, at least, the state of mind in which you are. 
He said that he had found a panacea for it ; and his words, to judge 
from the way in which they have taken root, and spread, and con- 
quered, must have some depth and life in them. Why not try 
them ? Just read the first nine chapters of St. Paul's Papistic to 
the Romans, and write me your heart about them. But never 
mind what anybody, Unitarian or Trinitarian,* may say they mean. 
Read them as you would a Greek play — taking for granted that 
they mean the simplest and most obvious sense which can be put 
upon them. 

" Let me hear more — I long for another letter. I need not say 
that I consider your confidence an honor, and shall keep it sacred. 

" Do not consult ******, \ love him well, but he has no 

* His correspondent had been brouglit up a Unitarian. 



164 Charles Kiitgsley. 

evangel for you. I should be glad to see him in the state you are 
in now. It would be nearer health." 

In the summer of 1852 the Right Hon. Thomas Erskine, with 
his family, settled at Fir Grove, Eversley. For the next twelve 
happy years he was friend and counsellor to the Rector, and to the 
parish his influence and example was a priceless blessing. The 
Judge and his family reheved him of a load of expense and conse- 
quent anxiety in the matter of the parish charities, which had 
hitherto fallen almost exclusively on the Rector ; regular district 
visiting began, and at Fir Grove, which was henceforth like a second 
home to him and his wife, some of the most charming friendships of 
that period of his life were formed. It was a new era in Eversle)'', 
and with fresh help and fresh hope he worked cheerfully, and had 
the heart once more to turn his thoughts to poetry. The " Chris- 
tian Socialist" at this time came to an end, and Parson Lot spoke 
his " last words " in its last number, concluding thus : — 

" Let us say little and work the more. We shall be the more 
respected, and the more feared too for it. People will begin to 
believe that v/e really know what we want, and really do intend to 
get it, and really believe in its righteousness. And the spectacle 
of silent working faith is one at once so rare and so noble, that it 
tells more, even on opponents, than ten thousand platform pyro- 
technics. In the meantime it will be no bad thing for us if we 
are beaten sometimes. Success at first is dangerous, and defeat 
an excellent medicine for testing people's honesty — for setting 
them earnestly to work to see what they want, and what are the 
best methods of attaining it. Our sound thrashings as a nation 
in the first French war were the making of our armies ; and it is 
good for an idea, as well as for a man, to ' bear the yoke in his 
youth.' The return match will come off", and many, who are now 
our foes, will then be our friends ; and in the meantime, 

' The proper impulse lias been given, 
Wait a little longer.' 

"Parson Lot." 

This was his last signature as Parson Lot. At the same time he 
writes to the editor : " If you want an Epicedium, I send one. 
It is written in a hurry, so if you like, reject it ; but I have tried to 
get the maximum of terseness and melody. 



An Epicedium. 165 



"So die, thou child of stormy dawn, 

Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse ; 
Chilled early by the bigot's curse, 
The pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn. 

Fair death, to fall in teeming June, 
When every seed which drops to earth 
Takes root, and wins a second birth 

From streaming shower and gleaming moon 

Fall warm, fall fast, thou mellow rain ; 

Thou rain of God, make fat the land ; 

That roots, which parch in burning sand, 
May bud to flower and fruit again. 

To grace, perchance, a fairer morn 
In mighty lands beyond the sea. 
While honor falls to such as we 

From hearts of heroes yet unborn. 

Who in the light of fuller day, 
Of loving science, holier laws, 
Bless us, faint heralds of their cause, 

Dim beacons of their glorious way. 

Failure? while tide-floods rise, and boil 
Round cape and isle, in port and cove, 
Resistless, star-led from above : 

What though our tiny wave recoil ? 



"Jime 9, 1852. 



" Charles Kingsley." 

TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. 



EvERSLEY Rectory, June 6, 1852. 

" Too tired, confused, and happy to work, I sit down for a 
chat with yon. 

" I. About the last number of ' Hypatia.' I dare say you are 
right. I wanted, for artistic purposes, to keep those two chapters 
cool and calm till just the very end of each ; and it is very difficult 
to be quiet without also being dull. But this, you know, is only 
after all rough copy; and such running criticisms are of the very 
greatest helj) to me. About the ' Saga : ' I sent it to A^Tax Miiller, 
who did not like it at all, he said ; because, though he highly ap- 
proved of the form (and gave me a good deal of learned advice 
in re), it was too rational and moral and rounded, he said, and not 
irrational and vast, and dreamy, and hyperbolic — like a true saga. 
But 1 told him, that as a parson to the English public, I was ex- 



1 66 Charles Kingsley. 

pected to point a moral ; and so I put Miiller's criticism and yours 
too into the mouth of Agihnund, who complains of its respectable 
Benjamin Franklin tone. 

"As for the monks : 'pon honor they are slow fellows — but then 
they were so horribly slow in reality. And I can't see but that 
Pambo's palaver in my tale is jusL what I find in Rosweyde's ' Vitse 
Patrum,' and Athanases' ' Life of Anthony.' Almost every ex- 
pression of Pambo's is a crib from some one, word for word. And 
his instances are historic ones. Moreover, you must recollect, 
that Arsenius was no mere monk, but a finished gentleman and 
court intriguer — taken ill with superstition. ... As for the 
Sermons,* I am very glad you like any of them. About what you 
don't like, I will tell you honestly, I think that I have not said 
anything too strong. People must be cured of their horrible 
notions of God's arbitrary power — His ' satisfaction ' in taking ven- 
geance — His inflicting a ])ermanent arbitrary curse as a penalty — 
His being the author of suffering or evil in any way. I have been 
driven to it by this. It is easy enough in the case of a holy per- 
son to use the stock phrase of its having ' pleased God to afflict 
them,' because one sees that the affliction is of use ; but you can't 
and darn't say that God is pleased, i.e., satisfied, or rejoiced to 
afflict poor wretched heathens in St. Giles's, to whom, as far as we 
can see, the affliction is of no use, but the N&xy reverse. The 
school formula (not a Scripture one at all, mind) works very well 
in the school, when at his desk -or in the pulpit the good pedant 
is bringing out his system to a select audience of ' Christian friends,' 
and forgetting, he and they too, that outside the walls lies a whole 
world who, he confesses himself, have no more to do with his for- 
mula (at least till they find themselves in hell at last) than sticks or 
stones. But if I am to preach a gospel, it must have to do with 
the people outside the tract-and-sermon-world, as well as inside it ; 

and then the formula, like most others, don't fit 

■ "If, however, I found it in Scripture, I should believe it : what I 
want is — plain inductive proof from texts. The ' it has pleased 
the Lord to bruise Him,' is just the very opposite. The pi.th and 
marrow of the 53d of Isaiah being, that He of whom it speaks is 
afflicted, not for the good of His own soul, but for others — that He 
is ennobled by being sacrificed. It seems to me, that the only way 
to escape the dilemma really is, to believe that God is what He 
has revealed Himself to be — ' A Father.' If a child said, ' I was 
naughty, and it pleased my father to whip me for it,' should we not 
feel that the words were hollow and absurd ? And if F. died 
to-morrow. God forbid that I should say of my Father in heaven, it 
pleased Him to take her from me. If the Lord Jesus is the express 
image of His Father's glory, then His Father cannot be like that. 

* National Sermons, First Series. 



Sorrozv a?id its Lessons. 167 

For could I dare believe that it would not pain the Blessed Lord 
infinitely more than it would pain me, if He was compelled by my 
sins, or by any other necessity of His government of this rebel- 
lious world, to inflict on me, not to mention on the poor little chil- 
dren, that bitter agony ? In the face of such real thoughts, school 
terms vanish, and one has to rest on realities ; on the belief in 
a human-hearted, loving, sorrowing Lord, and of A Father whose 

image He, in some inexplicable way is or one would go mad. 

And 1 have always found, in talking to my ]ieoi)le in private, that all 
second-hand talk out of books about the benefits of affliction, was 
rain against a window pane, blinding the view — but never entering. 
But I ca?i make a poor wretch believe — ' the Lord Jesus is just as 
sorry as you that you have compelled Him for a while to deliver 
you over to Satan for the punishment of the flesh, that your soul 
maybe saved thereby.' Till you can make them believe that God 
is not pleased, but ^/jrpleased to afflict them, I never found them 
any the better for their affliction. They take either a mere hypo- 
critically fatahst view of their sorrow, or else they are terrified and 
despairing, and fancy themselves under a curse, and God angry 
with them, and are ready to cry, ' I^et us curse God and die ! If 
God be against me, what matter who is for me?' And so with 
* * * * J have been trying hard to make him believe that his 
soriows come from himself and the devil, just because he has been 
believing that they came from God. He has been believing and 
telling me that ' he is under a curse : that God's wrath is perma- 
nently abiding on him for acts committed at school years ago, 
which never can be undone, and that therefore — ' If God be 
against him, what matter who is for him ? ' 

" Now I have been trying to tell him, as I do every one — ' If 
God be for you, what matter who is against you ! ' I have been 
saying to him what Anthony used to say, as Pambo quotes him to 
Arsenius. I have been trying to make him understand that he is 
not in the devil's hands one moment longer than he likes, because 
God is as much the enemy of his sorrows as he is of his own, and 
that the moment he will allow God to remov6' those sorrows, the 

Lord will rejoice in doing so Am I to tell him it 

pleased God that he should do such and such wrong, or am I to 
tell him, that ' it pleased the devil into whose power, not God but 
you yourself put yourself years ago, deliberately separating your 
own will from God, and determining to be a law unto yourself, and 
to do exactly what was right in the sight of your own eyes ? But 
God abhors your misery ; God yearns to lift you out of it.' If I 
can make him feel diat first, then, and then only, I can go on to 
say, ' But He will not lift you out of it till it has taught you the 
lesson which He intends you to learn ; ' because then (instead of 
canting generalities, which, God forgive me, I too often use, and 
feel ready to vomit my own duty soul out the next minute) I can 



1 68 Charles Kingsley. 

tell him what lesson God intends him to learn by affliction, namely, 
the very lesson which I have been trying to teach him, — the very 
lesson which I preached in the three sermons on the cholera — that 
God is the foe of all misery and affliction ; that He yearns to raise 
us out of it, and to show us that in His presence is the fulness of 
life and joy, and that nothing but our own wilfulness and imperfec- 
tion keep us in it for an instant. I dare not say this of A. or B. I 
leave them to impute sin to themselves, but I will impute to 
myself, and not to God's will, the cause of every finger ache I 
have, because I know that I nevel: had a sorrow which I did not 
cause myself, or make necessary for myself by some sin of my 
own ; and I will stand by the service of the ' Visitation of the 
Sick,' which represents the man's sins as the reason of the sickness, 
and his recovery as God's will and desire. ' He doth not afflict 
willingly or grieve the children of men,' is a plain Scripture, and I 
will not explain it away to suit any theory whatsoever about the 
origin of evil ; but beheve that the first chapter of Job, and the two 
accounts of David's numbering the people, tell us all we can know 
about it. Thus, so far from allownig that what I say of God's 
absolute love of our happiness and hatred of our misery is the half- 
truth, which must be limited by anything else, I say it is the whole 
truth, the root truth, which must limit all theories about the benefit 
of suffering, or any other theories, and must be preached abso- 
lutely, nakedly, unreservedly first, as the Lord Jesus preached it, 
instead of any such theories or schemes (however true) to be of 
any real benefit to men. 

" I know all this is incoherent ; but I don't pretend to have 
solved this or any other problem. If you prove to me seven large 
self-contradictions in my own harangue it won't matter. All you 
will do, will be to drive me to a Socratic dialogue, which is the 
only way I can argue. 

" This is the end of my say, which I could not finish the other 
night." 

TO THE SAME. 

yune, 1852. 

** As Browning says : 

' Come in any shape, 
As a victor crowned with vine. 
Or a beaten slave, 
Only come, 
'Tis thy coming wliich I crave.' 

" In three weeks' time, or a month at furthest, we shall be de- 
lighted to see thee. My beloved roses will be just in glory, the 
fish will be just in season ; thanks to the late spring. My old 



His Poetic Faculty. 169 

hunter will be up from grass, and proud to carry you and me — per 
gig — to see the best of men, John Paine, saint and hop-grower, of 
Farnham, Surrey. Also we will talk of all matters in heaven and 
earth. That is, unless I am so deeply unthankful, as indeed I am, 
for all my blessings that the Giver finds it necessary, against His 
will, to send some bitter among my paradise of sweets .... 

But What has become of a huge packet I sent to you through 

Louis? It contained a burlesque novel in G. W. Reynolds's style, 
which I had highly finished, and would not lose not for no money. 
It must and shall be found ; therefore disgorge ! 

" Oh ! ah ! eh ! . . . . I have laid a poem and it won't 
hatch ! Oh for Mr. Cantelo * and his ecc-ecc-ecc cackle callobion ! 
. . . . Perseus and Andromeda. . . . T have written a lot 
in blank verse, and a lot in the metre of Hood's 'Hero and Lean- 
der ' (a noble poem, and so little known), and I can't please my- 
self. Rhymed metres run away with you, and you can't get the 
severe, curt, simple objectivity you want in them, and unrhymed 
blank verse is very bold in my hands, because I won't write 
'poetic diction,' but only plain English — and so I can't get mythic 
grandeur enough. Oh for the spirit of Tennyson's ' OEnone ! ' 
Write, pity, and advise. 

". . . What you say * * * writes to a friend about my ' ergon ' 
being poetry is quite true. I could not write ' Uncle Tom's 
Cabin,' and I can write poetry .... there is no denying it : 
I do feel a different being when I get into metre — I feel like 
an otter in the water, instead of an otter ashore. He can run fast 
enough ashore, and keep the hounds at a tearing gallop, as my legs 
found this spring in Snowdonia, but when he takes water, then in- 
deed he becomes beautiful, full of divine grace and freedom, and 
exuberance of power. Go and look at him in the Zoological Gar- 
dens, and you'll see what I mean. When I have done ' Hypatia ' 
I will write no more novels. I will write poetry — not as a profes- 
sion — but I will keep myself for it, and I do think I shall do some- 
thing that will live. I feel my strong faculty is that sense o^ form, 
which, till I took to poetry, always came out in drawing, drawing, 
but poetry is the true sphere, combining painting and music and 
history all in one." 

A friend lent him an old horse this year which gave him 
constant amusement, and kept him in health, and he writes to Mr. 
T. Hughes : — 

" I had just done my work, and seen my poor, and dinner was 
coming on the table yesterday — just four o'clock, — when the bow- 
wows appeared on the top of the Mount, trying my patch of gorse ; 

* Then hatching chickens by artificial heat at the Egyptian Hall. 



170 Charles Kings ley. 

so I jumped up, left the cook shrieking, and off. He wasn't there, 
but I knew where he was, for I keep a pretty good register of 
foxes (ain't they my parishioners, and parts of my flock ?) ; and, as 
the poor fellows had had a blank day, they were very thankful to 
find themselves in five minutes going like mad. We had an hour 
and a half of it — scent breast high as the dew began to rise (bleak 
north-easter — always good weather), and if we had not crossed a 
second fox, should have killed him in the open ; as it was we lost 
him after sunset, after the fiercest grind I have had this nine years, 
and I went back to my dinner. The old horse behaved beau- 
tifully ; he is not fast, but in the enclosed woodlands he can live 
up to any one and earned great honor by leaping in and out of the 
Tvoddon ; only four more doing it, and one receiving a mucker. I 
feel three years younger to-day. 

" P.S. — The whip tells me there were three in the river together, 
rolling over horse and man ! What a sight to have lost even by 
being a-head. 

'• Have you seen the story of the run of January 7, when Mr. 
Woodburne's hounds found at Blackholme, at the bottom of 
Windermere, and ended beyond Helvellyn, more than fifty miles 
of mountain. After Applethwaite Crag (where the field lost them) 
they had a ring on High Street (2700 feet) of an hour unseen by 
mortal eye ; and after that were seen by shepherds in Patter- 
dale, Brotker Water, top of Fairfield (2900) Dunnaid Gap ; and 
then over the top of Helvellyn (3050) ; and then to ground on 
Birkside Screes — I cannot find it on the maps. But what a poetic 
thing ! Helvellyn was deep in frost and snow. Oh, that I could 
Avrite a ballad thereanent. The thing has taken possession of me ; 
but I can't find words. There was never such a run since we 
were born ; and think of hounds doing the last thirty miles alone ! " 

One of his many correspondents at this time was Frederika 
Bremer, the Swedish novelist, Vi^ho, in the previous autumn among 
other visitors,- paid a visit to Eversley Rectory. She had come to 
England to see the Great Exhibition, but she expressed one still 
stronger desire, which was to see Charles Kingsley, whose writings 
had struck a deep chord in her heart. It would be needless to say 
that he thought her one of the most highly cultivated women he 
had ever conversed with, and her sweet gentleness and womanli- 
ness attracted him still more than her intellect. After she left 
Eversley, she sent him Esaia Tegner's " Frithiof's Saga," with this 
inscription: "To the Viking of the New Age, Charles Kingsley, 
this story of the Vikings of the Old, from a daughter of the Vikings, 
his friend and admirer, Frederika Bremer." He had several letters 



Letter from Frederika Bremer. 171 

from her, but there is only space for this one, sent with a copy of 
her "Midnight Sun." 

FREDERIKA BREMER TO CHARLES KINGSLEY. 

London, Nov. i, 1851. 
"My young Friend, 

"Will you allow me to call you in writing, in plain words, 
what I have called and do call you in my mind and heart ? You 
must think then it is a baptismal of the spirit and you must under- 
stand it. I have received your books. They shall go with me 
over the sea to my fatherland, and there in my silent home, I shall 
read them, live in them, enjoy them deeply, intensely. I know it, 
know it all the better since I have been with you. 1 have had a 
dream sometimes of a young brother — like that one that was 
snatched away from me in his youth ; like him but more ardent, a 
young mind that I could like, love, sympathize with, quarrel with, 
live vs'ith, influence, be influenced by, follow, through the thorny 
path, through tropical islands, through storm and sunshine, higher 
and higher ascending in the metamorphosis of existence. I had 
that dream, that vision again when I saw you, that made me so sad 
at parting. But let that pass. With much we must part. Much 
must pass. More will remain. The communion of related souls 
will remain to be revived again and again. I shall hear from you, 
and I will write to you. Meantime my soul will hover about you 
with the wings of blessing thoughts. 1 send you some books ; not 
the one I thought of, I could not get a copy. But I send a copy 
of my last book, the ' Midnight Sun.' As you are fond of Natural 
History, the sketch of the people and provinces of Sweden in the 
introduction may interest you, this much belongs to the natural 
history of a country. The voyage up to the mountains of the mid- 
night sun, the scenery there is perfectly true to nature ; I have 
seen and lived it through myself Frithiof's Saga I take peculiar 
pleasure in asking you to accept, as a true follower of Scandinavian 
mind and life, and as the story of a spirit to whom your own 
is nearly related. 

"The universal, the tropical mind seems more embodied in man 
in the rigid zones of the north, than in those of tropical nature. 
(It is strange but it seems to me to be so) the old Viking's great- 
ness was that he wanted to conquer the whole world and make 
it his own. The mission of the spiritual Viking seems to me the 
higher one to conquer the world to God. So is yours. God speed 
you ! and He will ! God bless you and yours, your lovely wife 
first among those, and lastly — me as one of yours in sisterly love." 

In the autumn of 1852 an effort was made to open the Crystal 
Palace on Sundays — a move which many thought would stem the 



T72 Charles Kings ley. 

tide of Sunday drunkenness, and his friend Mr. George Grove 
wrote to him on the subject. He replied — 

TO GEORGE GROVE, ESQ. 

October 28, 1852. 

" I am in sad perplexity about your letter. I have been talking 
it over with Maurice. He says he shall take the matter in hand 
in his I>incoln's Inn sermons, and that it is a more fit thing for a 
London than for a country parson, being altogether against my 
meddling. My great hitch is that my family are strongly the other 
way, and that although my father himself is very liberal on the mat- 
ter, it would pain him dreadfully to see me in the wars with the 
Evangelical party on that point. His health is bad, and he is very 
nervous. You are sure to carry your point. But this I can do — • 
I will sound through a friend the Morning Chrojiicle and Guardian. 
A little good management on your company's part would get the 
whole of the High Church on their side — you and the company are 
as right as a church literally, for the Catholic doctrine and disci- 
pline are on your side 

"Don't fancy me afraid. You and the world know that I am not 
that : but if I were to tell you all the little ins and outs which 
make me shrink, you would see that I was right." 

TO THE SAME. 

■ January 2, 1853. 

" I send you an ex-cathednx opinion, which may do even 
more good than if I appended my too notorious name. But yet I 
use freely a pamphlet, here enclosed, by the Rev. Baldwin Brown,* 
which I think the wisest and most eloquent speech, save Maurice's, 
which I have seen on the matter. 

"FOR PUBLICATION. 

" My DEAR Grove, — T am much shocked to hear that this Anti- 
Crystal-Palace Agitation is injuring the clergy in the estimation of 
the laity. Those who have taken part in it must bear their own 
burden ; for whatsoever they have said and done is really, and 
ought to be clearly understood to be, the consequence of their own 
party opinions, and not of the doctrines either of the Bible or of 
the Church of England. The Church of England knows nothing 
of that definition of the Sabbath as a fast ; which the Puritans bor- 
rowed from the Pharisees and Rabbins of the most fallen and 

* Minister of Brixton Independent Church, author of " The Higher Life," 
" The Home Life," and a remarkable little volume published in 1875, entitled 
" The Doctrine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love." 



Letter to George Grove. 173 

hideous period of Judaism, and which the Lord denounced again 
and again as contrary to, and destructive of, the very idea and 
meaning of the Sabbath. The Church of England calls Sunday a 
feast-day, and not a fast ; and it is neither contrary to her ritual 
letter, nor to her spirit, to invite on that day every Englishman to 
refresh himself with the sight of the wonders of God's earth, or 
with the wonders of men's art, which she considers as the results 
of God's teaching and inspiration. 

" The letter, moreover, as well as the spirit of the Bible is di- 
rectly in favor of the arguments brought forward by the Crystal 
Palace Company's advocates. The Sabbath, it declares, was made 
for man. And man, it declares to be, not a niere ' soul to be 
saved' (an expression nowhere used in Scripture, in its modern 
sense of a spirit, to be got safely through to some future state of 
bliss), but as consisting of body, soul, and spirit — meaning by soul 
what we call intellect and feelings. And therefore any institution, 
which like the Crystal Palace tends to give healthy and innocent 
rest and refreshment to body, mind, and tastes, is in accordance in 
a lower sphere certainly, but still directly in accordance with the 
letter of the Sabbatical institution, as a day of rest made for man 
as man. 

" I think that you would find, — were any real danger to the Crys- 
tal Palace scheme to require a wide-spread agitation in its favor, 
that the High Church party, as well as the great majority of ' moder- 
ate churchmen,' would coincide in this yiew, and that the present 
outcry would be found to have proceeded only from that rapidly 
decreasing Low Church party, which tries to unite most eclectically 
and inconsistently a watery Calvinism with the profession of the 
Catholic creeds and formularies of the Church of England. Firmly 
convinced that in this case the Vox Populi coincides with the Vox 
Dei, 

" I remain, yours faithfully, 

"A High Church Parson." 



CHAPTER XII. 

1853- 
Aged 34. 

The Rector in his Church — "Hypatia" Letters from Chevalier Bunsen — Mr, 
Maurice's Theological Essays — Correspondence with Thomas Cooper. 

The books which entailed so many letters, now also attracted 
strangers to Eversley Church on Sunday. Officers from Sandhurst 
would constantly walk over, and occasionally a stray clergyman 
would be seen in the free sittings. 

"Twenty-five Village Serm6ns" had been published in 1849, ^^^ 
had been brought into notice by a review in the "Times," and 
" Sermons on National Subjects," perhaps the most remarkable of 
all his volumes of sermons, had just been brought out. His 
preaching was becoming a great power. It was the speech of a 
live man to living beings. 

"Yes, my friends," he would say, "these are real thoughts. 
They are what come into people's minds every day; and I am here 
to talk to you about what is really going on in your soul and mine ; 
not to repeat to you doctrines at second hand out of a book, and 
say, ' There, that is what you have to believe and do, and if you do 
not, you will go to hell ; ' but to speak to you as men of like pas- 
sions with myself; as sinning, sorrowing, doubting, struggling hu- 
man beings ; to talk to you of what is in my own heart, and will be 
in your hearts too, some day, if it has not been already. . . ." 

The Collect he invariably used before preaching for twenty-four 
years was the one for the Second Sunday in Advent, till about six 
years ago, when the question of prayer before sermon being dis- 
cussed in his parish, he consulted his diocesan (Samuel, Bishop 
Wilberforce), and decided to abide by his opinion. From that time 
he used in the morning the Invocation to the Trinity, in the after- 
noon the usual Collect and Lord's Prayer. 

After he gave out his text, the poor men in the free sittings un- 
der the pulpit would turn towards Tiim, and settle, themselves into 



As a Preacher. 



175 



an attitude of fixed attention. In preaching he would try to keep 
still and calm, and fi-ee from all gesticulation ; but as he went on, 
he had to grip and clasp the cushion on which his sermon rested, 
in order to restrain the intensity of his own emotion ; and when, 
in spite of himself, his hands would escape, they would be lifted 
up, the fingers of the right hand working with a peculiar hovering 




EVBRSLEY CHURCH. 



movement, of which he was quite unconscious ; his eyes seemed 
on fire, his whole frame worked and vibrated. It was riveting to 
see as well as hear him, as his eagle glance penetrated every cor- 
ner of the church, and whether there were few or many there, it 
was enough for him that those who were present were human be- 
ings, standing between two worlds, and that it was his terrible re- 
sponsibility as well as high privilege, to deliver a message to each 
and all. The great festivals of the church seemed to inspire him, 
and his words would rise into melody. At Christmas, Easter, 



176 Charles Kings ley. 

Whitsuntide, and on the Holy Trinity especially, his sermon be- 
came a song of gladness ; during Advent, a note of solemn warn- 
ing. On Good Friday, and through the Passion week evening ser- 
vices, it would be a low and mournful chant, uttered in a deep, 
plaintive, and at moments, almost agonised tone, which hushed his 
congregation into a silence that might be felt. 

The evening services for the Passion Week were given at an 
hour to suit the laboring men on their way home from work, when 
a few would drop into church, and to those few he preached a short 
sermon of about fifteen minutes, which a London congregation 
would have gone miles to hear. Those who were present, some- 
times only fifteen to twenty besides his own family, will not forget 
the dimly-lighted chuch in the twilight of the spring evenings, with 
its little sprinkling of worshippers, and the silence as uf death and 
the grave, when with a look which he never seemed to have at any 
other season, he followed Christ through the sufferings of the Holy 
Week, beginning with either the liii. or Ixiii. of Isaiah, on each day 
its own event, from the First Communion to the Betrayal — the 
Denial of Peter, the fate of Judas, on to the foot of the Cross. 
And when " the worst was over," with what a gasp of relief was 
Easter Even, with its rest and quietness, reached ; and with signi- 
ficant words about that intermediate state, in which he so deeply 
believed, he would lead our thoughts from the peaceful sepulchre 
in the garden to the mysterious gate of Paradise. 

Passion Week was, to him, a time of such real and terrible pain 
that he always thanked God when it was over ; and on Easter day 
he would burst forth into a song of praise once more, for the Blessed 
Resurrection not only of Christ the Lord, but of man, and of the 
dear earth he loved so well — spring after winter, birth after death. 
Every gnat that danced in the sunshine on the blessed Easter 
morn ; every blade of grass in the dear churchyard spoke of hope 
and joy and a living God. And the flowers in the church, and the 
graves decked with bright wreaths, would add to his gladness, as he 
paced up and down before service. Many a testimony has come 
to the blessing of those village sermons. "Twenty-five village 
sermons," said a clergyman working in a great city parish, " like a 
plank to a drowning man kept me from sinking in the 'blackness 
of darkness,' which surrounds the unbeliever. Leaning upon these, 
while carried about by every wind of doctrine, I drifted hither and 



Preparation of Sermons. 177 

thither, at last, thanks be to God, I found standing ground." But 
none who merely read them could tell what it was to hear them, 
and to see him, and the look of inspiration on his face, as he 
preached them. While to those his nearest and dearest, who looked 
forward with an ever fresh intensity of interest to the Sunday 
services week after week, year after year, each sermon came with 
double emphasis from the knowledge that the daily life of the week 
days was no contradiction to, but a noble carrying out of the words 
preached in church. 

His sermons owed much to the time he gave himself'for prepara- 
tion. The Sunday services, while they exhausted him physically, 
yet seemed to have the effect of winding his spirit up to higher 
flights. And often late on Sunday evening he would talk over 
with his wife the subject and text of the next week's sermon. On 
Monday, he would, if possible, take a rest, but on Tuesday, to use 
his own words, it would be set on the stocks. The text already 
chosen, the method of treating it was sketched, and the first half 
carefully thought out before it was dictated or written, then put by 
for a day or two, while yet it was simmering in his brain, and finished 
on Friday. He seldom put off his sermon till Saturday. 

This year, begun at Eversley and ended at Torquay, was one of 
much anxiety and incessant labor. Unable to get a pupil, he was 
therefore unable to keep a curate. The Sunday services, night 
schools, and cottage lectures, were done single-handed ; and if he 
seemed to withdraw from his old associates in the cause of co- 
operation, and of the working men in London, it was not from 
want of interest, but of time and strength. He went only once to 
London, to lecture for the Needlewomen's Association. Constant 
sickness in the parish and serious illness in his own household gave 
him great anxiety; while the proceedings of the King's College 
Council against his friend and teacher, Mr. Maurice, on the ground 
of the views on eternal punishment, published in his Theological 
Essays, depressed him deeply. But the year had its lights as well 
as shadows; he had the comfort of seeing the first good national 
school built and opened in his parish ; friends, new and old, came 
and went — Mr. Maurice frequently — Bishop McDougall of Labuan, 
and Mr. Alfred Tennyson. His intimacy with Bishop Wilberforce, 
Chevalier Bun sen, and Miss Mitford deepened ; he made the per- 
sonal acquaintance of several of his hitherto unknown correspond- 
12 



178 Charles Kings ley. 

ents, and met Mr. Robert Browning and his wife, for the first time, 
at the house of mutual friends. 

"Hypatia" this year came out as a book; and by thoughtful 
people was recognized not only as a most valuable page of history, 
but as a real work of art. In one section of the English Church it 
made him bitter enemies, more bitter, perhaps, than were stirred 
up by either "Yeast" or the " Saint's Tragedy." The work was 
more appreciated in Germany than in England for some years. 

" I delight in Hypatia^'' said Chevalier Bunsen, when reading it 
as a serial the year before, " only I cannot get over the hardship 
against our common ancestors in presenting them in that drunken 
mood in which they appear as lawless and blood-sucking barbarians 
and chronic berserkers, rather than what I thought them to be. But 
I have only just landed Philammon at Alexandria, and therefore 
am not able to judge." 

The following letters, written after the book appeared as a whole, 
are doubly interesting from their allusions to Baron Bunsen' s own 
" Hyppolytus " : 

CHEVALIER BUNSEN TO REV. C. KINGSLEY. 

Prussia House, May^ 1853. 

" I want just to send you a line to wish you joy for the wonderful 
picture of the inward and outward life of Hypatia's age, and of the 
creation of such characters as hers and Raphael's, and the other pro- 
togonists. I have such a longing to see you quietly .... that 
I had conceived a hope you might be induced to pay me a visit at 
the seaside. One day by the sea is worth more than a month in 
this distracting metropolis, or Great Sahara. 

" I have written, with all the feeling of awe and responsibility, a 
confession of my faith, as conclusive of the Preface to my ' Ignatius 
and Hyppolytus.' .... I am anxious to read it to you, and 
to speak it to you. 

" You have performed a great and lasting work, but it is a bold 
undertaking. You fire over the heads of the public, ojov vuv ctv^pwTroj 
slov, as Nestor says, the pigmies of the circulating library. Besides, 
you have (pardon me) wronged your own child most cruelly. Are 
you aware that many people object to reading or allowing it to 
be read, because the author, says in the Preface, it is not written 
for those of pure mind ? * My daughters exclaimed when they read 

* The passage referred lo is the cpening paragiaph of the Preface where the 
author says, " A picture of life in the fifth century must needs contain much 



Letters froin Bit7zsen. 179 

that in the Preface, after having read to their mamma the whole in 
nmiibers to general edification, as they do Bible and Shakspeare 
every day. I should wish you to have said, that in describing and 
picturing an age like that, there must here and there be nudities 
as in nature and as in the Bible. Nudities there are because there 
is truth. For God's sake, let that Preface not come before Ger- 
many without some modified expression. Impure must be the 
minds who can be offended or hurt by your picture ! What offends 
and hurts is the modern Lusfeniheit, that veiling over indecency, 
exciting imagination to draw off the veil in order to see not God's 
naked nature, but corrupted man's indecency. Forgive that I take 
the child's part against the father ! But, indeed, that expression is 
not the right, and unjust to yourself, and besides highly detrimental 
to the book. 

" You know of the persecution of the Evangelicals, and High and 
dry against Maurice ! I go to-morrow to Hare, and stay till 
Tuesday. I am sure you would be more than welcome there, with 
me and Savage Landor, who arrives also to-morrow ; but I am 
afraid you are not so easily movable. There is place at the rectory 
or at Lime ; Mrs. Augustus Hare is there and well. 

"I depend, however, on your being my guest at Carlton Terrace. 
Take it as a joint invitation from my wife and myself to Mrs. Kings- 
ley and yourself. I have been moved to write strange things in 
the first volume of the new ' Hippolytus,' and in the Key (to which 
Max Muller has contributed two most prodigious chapters). You 
know the spirit writes what he will, and must. The times before us 
are brimful of destruction — therefore of regeneration. The Nemesis 
is coming, as Ate, 

" Farewell, 

" Ever yours faithfully, 

" BUNSEN," 



which will be painful to any reader, and which the young and innocent will do 
well to leave altogether unread. It has to represent a very hideous, thouo^h a 
very great, age ; one of those critical and cardinal eras in the history of the 

human race, in which virtues and vices manifest themselves side by side evjn 

at times, in the same person — with the most startling openness and power. One 
who writes of such an era labors under a troublesome disadvantage. He dare 
not tell how evil people were ; he will not be believed if he tell how good they 
were. In the present case that disadvantage is doubled ; for while the sins of 
the Church, however heinous, were still such as admit of being expressed in 
words, the sins of the heathen world against which she fought, were utterly uu- 
describable ; and the Christian apologist is thus compelled, for the sake of 
decency, to state the Church's case far more weakly than the facts deserve. — 
Preface to '• Hypatia," vii. 



i8o Charles Kings ley. 

Again the Chevalier writes : 

September 16, 1853. 

" I must express to you, in a few words, how much I rejoice in 
hearing that you intend to propose to Messrs. Tauchnitz to under- 
take a German translation of your admirable ' Hypatia.' You 
know what I think about it. You have succeeded in epicizing, 
poetically and philosophically, one of the most interesting and 
eventful epochs of the world, clothing the spirits of that age in the 
most attractive fable ; you resuscitate the real history of the time 
and its leading characters so poetically that we forget that instruc- 
tion is conferred upon us in every page. I find no book to which I 
can compare ' Hypatia' but Hope's ' Anastasius.' But how much 
more difficult, and how much more important is the subject you 
treat ! I find that my friends, not only here, but also in Germany, 
share my opinion. I have sent a copy to Abaken, expressing to 
him my anxiety it should be well translated. It requires a man of 
unusual knowledge and talents to do justice to the original and to 
the subject. Now nobody can manage that better than the distin- 
guished house with which I understand you are connected. May I 
soon hear that a translation is coming forth ? 

" I hope you may be able to come to town during the beautiful 
months of quiet. I shall be settled there for good from 15th Oc- 
tober. ' Hippolytus ' is coming out in a second edition, but as 
three different works. 

" a, Hippolytus and his Age (first volume), newly-written, to 
match the Picture of the congregational life in the second volume. 
Two volumes. 

" b, The Philosophical Key to it ; or Outlines of a Philosophy 
of the History of Language and Religion. Two volumes. 

" c, Analecta A^ite-Nicaena (the philosophical key). Three vol- 
umes. 

" When you come to town you must stay with me at Carlton 
Terrace, that we may have quiet night hours and (if you are an 
early riser) morning hours together, U7iter vier Aiigen, as we say. 
In the meantime, T remain, 

" My dear Mr. Kingsley, 

" Ever yours faithfully, 

" BUNSEN." 

An attack on Mrs. Gaskell produced the following letter : 

EvERSLEY Rectory, July 25, 1853. 
" My dear Madam, 

" I am sure that you will excuse my writing to you thus 
abruptly when you read the cause of my writing. 

" I am told, to my great astonishment, that you have heard 



Essays of Maurice. i8i 

painful speeches on account of ' Ruth ; ' what was told me raised 
all my indignation and disgust, 

" Now 1 have read only a little (though, of course, I know the 
story) of the book ; for the same reason that I cannot read ' Uncle 
Tom's Cabin,' or 'Othello,' or 'The Bride of Lammermoor.' It 
is too painfully good, as I found before I had read half a volume. 

" But this I can tell you, that among all my large acquaintance 
I never heard, or have heard, but one unanimous opinion of the 
beauty and righteousness of the book, and that, above all, from 
real ladies, and really good women. If you could have heard the 
things which I heard spoken of it this evening by a thorough High 
Church fine lady of the world, and by her daughter, too, as pure 
and pious a soul as one need see, you would have no more doubt 
than I have, that whatsoever the ' snobs ' and the bigots may 
think, English people, in general, have but one opinion of ' Ruth,' 
and that is, one of utter satisfaction, 

" I doubt not you have had this said to you already often. Be- 
lieve me, you may have it said to you as often as you will by the 
purest and most refined of Paighsh women. 

" May God bless you, and help you to write many more such 
books as you have already written, is the fervent wish of 

" Your very faithful servant, 

" C. KlNGSLEY." 

Mr. Maurice's volume of "Theological Essays" appeared at this 
time, and the subject of one, on Eternal Life and Death, was 
the cause of his dismissal from King's College by Dr. Jelf and the 
Committee. The subject had occupied Mr. Kingsley's mind for 
years, and the persecution of his friend and teacher roused all his 
chivalry. 

" The Time and Eternity Question," he says in writing to a 
friend, "is coming before the public just now in a way which may 
seriously affect our friend Maurice, unless all who love him make 
good fight. 

"Maurice's essays, as you say, will constitute an epoch. If the 
Church of England rejects them, her doom is fixed. She will rot 
and die, as the Alexandrian did before her. If she accepts them 
— not as ' a code complete,' but as hints towards a new method 
of thought, she may save herself still." 

TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 

EVERSLEY, yuly 14, 1853. 

"I have delayed writing to you about the Essays* till I had 
read them over many times, which I have now done. 

* "Theological Essays." 



1 82 Charles Kings ley. 

" That I agree and admire, is needless to be said. It seems to 
me that the book marks a new era in English ecclesiastical history 
. . . not that yoiL, single-handed, have caused it : but that 
you have justified and expressed what is seething in the minds of 
so many. I was utterly astonished at finding in page after page 
things which I had thought, and hardly dared to confess to myself, 
much less to preach. However, you have said them now ; and I, 
gaining courage, have begun to speak more and more boldly, 
thanks to your blessed example, in a set of sermons on the 
Catechism, accompanying your angels' trump on my private 

penny-whistle Nevertheless, a tail of penny-whistles, 

if they will only keep tune with you, may be useful. For there is 
much in your book which will be caviare. I believe firmly that it 
will do more good to the infidels and heretics than to the orthodox, 
and I will tell you why. The former are not hampered in mind 
by those forced dogmatic, systematised interpretations of theologic 
words, which are destroying too often in the latter the plain sense 
of right and wrong, truth and falsehood ; and they will, therefore, 
take your words in their simple and honest meaning better than 
'believers' and 'churchmen,' who, perhaps unconsciously to them- 
selves, will be substituting for each of your Catholic expressions 
some ghost of a meaning which they got from Crossman or Watts. 
Therefore you must expect good pious people to accuse you of 
misinterpreting scripture and preaching- a new gospel (which, 
indeed, you do), and of the very faults of which you and I should 
accuse them, that is of partial induction from those texts which 
seem to make for your ' theory,' and here we of the penny-whistles 
shall be of use to you, in verifying your inductions by applying 
them to fresh texts. 

" Moreover, you must submit to be accused of sentimentaUsm 
because you appeal to inward experiences — by the Sadducees, 
because they have not had these experiences, or don't like to con- 
fess them to themselves — and by the Pharisees, because they allow 
no spiritual experiences to be subjects of theologic inquiry, 
except those which fit into their system ; and so, indeed, as 1 have 
more than once dared to tell them, both disbelieve that man was ,^ 
made in the image of God, and that God was made man of the 
substance of his mother. 

" On the whole, the outlook is perfectly awful, when one sees 
the mountains of rubbish which have to be cleared before people 
can be made to understand their Bible and prayer-book — and still 
more awful, when one feels as I do, that I have just as much dirt 
and dust to get out of my own brain and heart, before I can see 
to take the mote out of my brother's eye ; and still more awful, 
when one feels, as one does, that though you are utterly right in 
asserting what the Bible says to be the keynote of our creeds and 
prayer-book, yet that there is much, especially in the latter parts of 



F. D. Maurice and King' s College. 183 

the prayer-book, which does chime in with the popular superstitions ; 
that though the compilers were indeed inspired, and raised most 
miraculously above their age, yet they were not always consistent 
in seeing what was to be said, any more than Augustine was ; and 
then comes the terrible business of being tempted to twist the 
tenth word, in order to make it fit the other nine, and of being 
called an eclectic, and of not being sure whether one is not one 
really. Not that I am frightened at any such awful prospect. 
If God is with us who can be against us ? If He has taught us so 
far, we may trust Him to teach us more, and make our strength as 
our day is. And if, as one is bound to expect, He does not show 
us the whole truth in this life, but lets us stop short somewhere, 
why what matter ? Let Him send by the hand of whom He will. 
He has set us to carry the lamp in the lamp-race a little further 
on — why should we pine at having to pass it on to fresh runners? 
It is quite honor enough (and I suspect, before we get it done, we 
shall find it quite work enough) to get one soul saved alive, or one 
truth cleared from rubbish, before we die." 



July, 1853. 

" It seems to me that two courses only are open to you, my dear 
master. One : to resign your King's College posts at once, with a 
solemn and sincere printed protest against being required to believe 
and say things which the Articles of the Church of England do not 
require. Or, to fight it out to the very last and compel them to the 
odium of rejecting you. 

" Either course would excite the sympathy and indignation of vast 
numbers. It remains to be considered. 

" I. By which process most truth would be hammered out by the 
strokes. 

" 2. Which would give least scandal to the Church, i.e., which 
would give least handle for heretics of the atheistic school to say, 
' Of course his opinions are incompatible with the Church. We 
always knew it, now it is proved; and he must join us, or start a 
schism of his own.' 

" Now as for the first count. I seriously think that by fighting 
as long as you can, you might bring the whole eschatological ques- 
tion up into the field in such a way, that they would be forced not 
only to give their opinions but their reasons, or unreasons for them ; 
and then, in the eyes of the world, the triumph is pretty sure, as it 
is written, ' Oh, that my enemy would write a book ! ' 

" I think, too, that in this way so iiiuch of the real liberality of 
our Articles and Liturgy might be made evident, as would prevent 
the heretics having any important case against the Church, and 
turn the wrath on to the present generation of rehgionists, and 



184 Charles Kingsley. 

on the bishops, as I wish to save reUgion and episcopacy, in 
England. 

" But if you are so completely a tenant-at-will at King's College 
that they can dismiss you without making their reasons public, then 
your only plan, surely, is to forestall them, and throw up your cure 
on the ground of your rights as an English priest, thereby again 
preventing scandal, in the true sense of the verb. 

" But whethersoever of these is your plan, will it not be expe- 
dient for one of us at least, to get up the question historically ? It 
seems to me that no such bondage has hitherto been formally 
demanded in the English Church. And if we can prove this point, 
we prove everything with precedent-worshijiping John Bull. The 
whole matter for the next seven years will practically turn on, not, 
* are you right or wrong ? ' but ' are you legally and formally per- 
mitted or unpermitted ? ' and that will depend, in a vague business 
(shame that it should be vague !) hke this, on — Were divines since 
the Reformation allowed to have their own opinions on this point, 
and yet to hold ecclesiastical preferment ? Indeed, paltry as this 
point may seem, we must have it formally proved or disproved, 
not only for our own safety, but for the safety of the Established 
Church. 

"■ Now do you know anything about this ? Do you know men 
who do ? Or can you get me put in the way of finding out by 
being told what books to read, and I will work it out. Let that be 
my business. We will settle hereafter in what form my results 
shall be brought into the battle. This seems to me the first indis- 
pensable practical act — not of defence, but of offence. 

" For I would not act on the defensive. If you only go to prove 
that you may hold what you do, you will either be smashed by the 
same arguments as smashed the good of Tract 90 with the evil of 
it, or you will be sorely tempted hereafter dare manus and say, ' If 
I can't hold this here, I will go where I can hold it' (not that you 
will ever yield to that temptation, but that it will come, and must 
be provided against). But if you go steadily on the offensive, say, 
I and you must hold this, and proclaim yourself as the champion 
of the honest and plain meaning of our formularies, and hurl back 
the onus probandi on the popular party, you will frighten them, 
get a hearing from the unorthodox, and bring over to your side 
the great mass who fear change, while they love and trust their 
formularies enough to be glad to have the right interpretation of 
them. 

" I was struck the other day by the pleasure which a sermon of 
mine gave not only to my clods, but to the best of my high church 
gentry, in which sermon I had just copied word for word your 
Essay on Eternal Life and Death — of course stating the thing 
more coarsely, and therefore more dangerously, than your wisdom 
would have let you do — and yet people were delighted. 



Archdeacon Hare Consulted. 185 

" Now forgive me, a thousand times I ask it, if I have seemed 
to put myself up as a counsellor. You know what I feel for you. 
But your cause is mine. We swim in the same boat, and stand or 
fall henceforth together. I am the mouse helping the lion — with 
this difference, that the mouse was outside the net when she gnawed 
it, while I am inside. For if you are condemned for these 
' opinions ' I shall and must therefore avow them." 

EvERSLEY, October 30. 

"Well, dearest master I shall not condole with 

you. You are above that : but only remind you of this day's 
Psalms, which have been to me, strangely enough, the Psalms for 
the day in all great crises of my life. 

" Will you please get the correspondence published as soon as 
possible, and send me down, if possible by return of post, the 
whole of it, and also Jelf's notice in the Record. I promise you, 
I will do nothing without consulting better and wiser men than 
myself; and I will show you all arguments which I may write. 
But the time is now come for those who love you to show their 
colors, and their teeth also. I am too unhappy about you to say 
much. You must know what I feel. I always expected it ; but 
yet, when it comes one cannot face it a bit the better. Neverthe- 
less, it is but a passing storm of dust." 

He now consulted Archdeacon Hare about a protest : he went 
to Oxford, and wrote to Cambridge. Archdeacon Hare's reply 
will show what was proposed, and who were to be taken into 
counsel : 

FROM ARCHDEACON HARE. 

St. Leonard's, Novetuber 10, 1853. 
" My dear Mr. Kingsley, 

" We know from of old that the Seniores Patrum were apt to 
^\x\\i\\\Q. Junior es inclined to act too precipitately; and it may 
perhaps be this drag of old age that makes me think the plan 
sketcht in your last letter somewhat over hasty. Time is an 
unimportant element in our proceedings : two or three months 
spent in the proper preparations will not injure, and may greatly 
benefit our cause. If we begin with getting a good list of eminent 
names to head our protest, before we publish it, it will be sure to 
command attention, and many will follow such leaders ; while, if 
it be circulated as the act of a small number, a cry will be raised 
against it as issuing from a few latitudinarians, and the priest and 
the scribe will pass it by on the other side. I should, indeed, be 
delighted if Keble were to espouse our cause : but I remember 
some sonnets of his, twenty years ago, on the blessings of the 



1 86 Charles Kingsley, 

Athanasian Creed, which struck me with terror and awe. Being 
absent from home, I cannot ascertain how Trench interprets the 
last parable in Matthew xxv. ; but I would fain hope we might 
have him : and he, as one of the Professors immediately affected 
by the recent decision, would rightly take the lead. 

" Thirl wall writes indignantly of the proceedings. When our 
project is further advanced, I will write to him about it : but he 
will have to consider how far a Bishop may join in such a protest. 
Stanley might consult Whately, who, I fancy, has already written 
on the subject. 

" Thompson and Sedgwick would be with us ; and perhaps 
Whewell also, if our protest were judiciously drawn up. 

" In the preamble, we must state the immediate ground foi 
the step we take, and the fact, not generally known, that our 
church has implicitly sanctioned the exercise of private judgment 
on this point, by the retracting of the 42d Article. It seems to 
me, too, that we must say something to remove the prima facie 
objection, which will strike most persons, from the Athanasian 
Creed ; and I think this may be done without appearing to dog- 
matize, while it will be a comfort to numbers to have this thorn 
drawn out of their hearts. 

" Stanley was in Cheshire the other day : I know not where he 
is now. 

" Yours most sincerely, 

" Julius C. Hare. 

" Since writing the above, I have a letter from Trench, pro- 
posing to come to Hurstmonceaux on Tuesday next. It would be 
a great delight to us, and would much forward our work, if you 
could meet him there." 

The following letters to Mr. Thomas Cooper, Chartist, who 
wrote the " Purgatory of' Suicides " in 1843-4, while imprisoned 
in Stafford Gaol on a charge of sedition, though spreading over 
several years, will be more interesting if read together without 
regard to dates. The corresponding letters that called them forth 
are full of power and vigor, and have been kindly placed by Mr. 
Cooper at the disposal of the editor, but want of space prevents 
their publication. When Mr. Kingsley first knew Thomas Cooper, 
he was lecturing on Strauss, in the John Street Lecture Rooms, to 
working men ; and after long struggles with his own sceptical diffi- 
culties, as will be seen by these letters, his doubts were solved, and 
he became a lecturer on Christianity, a work he continues now at 
the age of seventy. He is a man of vast reading and indomitable 



Letters to Thomas Cooper. 187 

courage. His autobiography, published in 1872, is a remarkable 
book well worth reading, both for its own sake and for the pictures 
of working class life and thought, which it reveals.* 

EvERSLEY, November z, 1853. 

". . . . Work and family illness have kept your kind letter 
imanswered, with many others, till this leisure morning. As to 
your ' Alderman Ralph,' 'I shall possess myself of a copy when I 
come to London, and also do myself the pleasure of caUing upon 
you. 

"I am glad you hke ' Hypatia.' I wrote it with my whole 
heart, trusting that I should find at least a few who would read it 
with their whole hearts, and I have not been disappointed." (Your 
Jew in ' Hypatia,' Thomas Cooper had said, shows me that you 
understand me.) 

" Your friend is a very noble fellow. As for converting either 
you or him, — what 1 want to do, is to make people believe in 
the Incarnation, as the one solution of all one's doubts and fears 
for all heaven and earth, wherefore I should say boldly, that, even 
if Strauss were right, the thing must either have happened some- 
where else, or will happen somewhere some day, so utterly does 
both my reason and conscience, and, as I think, judging from 
history, the reason and conscience of the many in all ages and 
climes, demand an Incarnation. As for Strauss, I have read a great 
deal of him, and his preface carefully.f Of the latter, I must say 
that it is utterly illogical, founded on a gross petitio principii ; as 
for the mass of the book, I would undertake, by the same falla- 
cious process, to disprove the existence of Strauss himself, or any 
other phenomenon in heaven or earth. But all this is a long story. 

* Life of Thomas Cooper, by himself, published by Hodder and Stoughton, 
London. 

f This refers to a letter in which Thomas Cooper says, "My friend, a noble 
young fellow, says you are trying to convert him to orthodoxy, and expresses 
great admiration for you. I wish you success with him, and I had almost said 
I wish you could next succeed with me ; but I think I am likely to stick where 
I have stuck for some years — never lessening, but I think increasing, in my love 
for the truly divine Jesus — but retaining the Strauss view of the Gospel." 
" Ah ! that grim Strauss," he says in a later letter, "how he makes the iron 
agony go through my bones and marrow, when I am yearning to get hold of 
Christ ! But you understand me ? Can you help me ? I wish I could be near 
you, so as to have a long talk with you often. I wish you could show me that 
Strauss's preface is illogical, and that it is grounded on a petitio principii. I 
wish you could bring me into a full and hearty reception of this doctrine of the 
Incarnation. I wish you could lift off the dead weight from my head and 
heart, that blasting, brutifying thought, that the grave must be my ' end all.' " 



1 88 Charles Kings ley. 

As long as you do see in Jesus the perfect ideal of man, you are 
in the right path, you are going toward the light, whether or not 
you may yet be allowed to see certain consequences which, as I 
believe, logicalUy follow from the fact of His being the ideal. 
Poor * * * * 's denial (for so I am told) of Jesus being the ideal of a 
good man, is a more serious evil far. And yet Jesus Himself said, 
* That if any one spoke a word against the Son of Man {i. e., 
against Him as the perfect man) it should be forgiven him ' ; but 
the man who could not be forgiven either in this world or that to 
come, was the man who spoke against the Holy Spirit, i. e., who 
had lost his moral sense and did not know what was righteous 
when he saw it — a sin into which we parsons are as likely to fall as 
any men, much more likely than the publicans and sinners. As 
long as your friend, or any other man loves the good, and does it, 
and hates the evil and flees from it, my Catholic creeds tell me 
that the Spirit of Jesus, ' the Word,' is teaching that man ; and 
gives me hope that either here or hereafter, if he be faithful over 
a few things, he shall be taught much. 

" You see, this is quite a different view from either the Dissent- 
ers or Evangelicals, or even the High-Church parsons. But it is 
the view of those old ' Fathers ' whom they think they honor, and 
whom they will find one day, in spite of many errors and supersti- 
tions, to be far more liberal, humane, and philosophical than our 
modern religionists . . . ." 

Thomas Cooper had now re-commenced lecturing at the Hall 
of Science on Sunday evenings, simply teaching theism, for he had 
not advanced farther yet in positive conviction. 

" Immediately after I had obeyed conscience," he says in his 
Autobiography, " and told the people I had been in the habit of 
teaching, that I had been wrong, I determined to open my mind 
fully to my large-hearted friend, Charles Kingsley. He showed 
the fervent sympathy of a brother. We began a correspondence 
which extended over more than a year. I told him every doubt, 
and described every hope I had ; and he counselled, instructed, 
and strengthened me to the end 

" I told him that while I diligently read ' Bridgewater Treatises,' 
and all the other books with which he furnished me, as a means 
of beginning to teach sceptics the truth from the very foundation, 
that the foundations themselves seem to glide from under my 
feet. I had to struggle against my own new and tormenting 
doubts about God's existence, and feared I should be at last over- 
whelmed with darkness and confusion of mind. 

" No, no ! " said my faithful and intelligent friend. " You will 
get out of all doubt in time. When you feel you are in the 



yustice of God. 189 

deepest and gloomiest doubt, pray the prayer of desperation ; 
cry out, ' Lord, if Thou dost exist, let me know that Thou dost 
exist ! Guide my mind by a way that I know not, into Thy truth,' 
and God will deliver you." 

TO THE SAME. 

EvERSLEY, September i6, 1855. 

" Poor * * * * sent me some time ago a letter of yours which I 
ought to have answered before, in which you express dissatisfaction 
with the ' soft indulgence ' which I and Maurice attribute to God. 
I am sure you mistake us. No men are more ready to say (I at 
least from experience) that 'it is a fearful thing to fall into the 
hands of the living God.' All we say is, that God is just, and re- 
wards every man according to his work. 

" My belief is, that God will punish (and has punished already 
somewhat) every wrong thing I ever did, unless I repent — that is, 
change my behavior therein ; and that His lightest blow is hard 
enough to break bone and marrow. But as for saying of any 
human being whom I ever saw on earth that there is no hope for 
them ; that even if, under the bitter smart of just punishment, 
they opened their eyes to their folly, and altered their minds, even 
then God would not forgive them ; as for saying that, I will not 
for all the world and the rulers thereof. I never saw a man in 
whom there was not some good, and I believe that God sees that 
good far more clearly, and loves it far more deeply, than I can, 
because He Himself put it there, and, therefore, it is reasonable to 
believe that He will educate and strengthen that good, and chas- 
tise and scourge the holder of it till he obeys it, and loves it, and 
gives up himself to it ; and that the said holder will find such chas- 
tisement terrible enough, if he is unruly and stubborn, I doubt not, 
and so much the better for him. Beyond this I cannot say; but I 
like your revulsion into stern puritan vengeance — it is a lunge too 
far the opposite way, like Carlyle's ; but anything better than the 
belief that our Lord Jesus Christ was sent into the world to enable 
bad men to be infinitely rewarded, without doing anything worth 
rewarding — anything, oh ! God of mercy, as well as justice, than 
a creed which strengthens the heart of the wicked, by promising 
him life, and makes * * * * * * * believe (as I doubt not he does 
believe) that though a man is damned here, his soul is saved here- 
after." 

1S56. 

"Your letter this morning delighted me, for / see that you see. 
If you are an old hand at the Socratic method, you will be saved 
much trouble. I can quite understand young fellows kicking at it. 
Plato always takes care to let us see how all but the really earnest 
kicked at it, and flounced off in a rage, having their own notions 



190 Charles Kings ley. 

torn to rags, and scattered, but nothing new put in the place 
thereof. It seems to me (I speak really humbly here) that the 
danger of the Socratic method, which issued, two or three genera- 
tions after in making his so-called pupils the academics mere 
destroying sceptics, priding themselves on picking holes in every- 
thing positive, is this — to use it without Socrates' great Idea, which 
he expressed by * all knowledge being memory,' which the later 
Platonists, both Greek and Jew, e. g., Philo and St. John, and 
after them the good among the Roman stoics and our early 
Quakers and German mystics, expressed by saying that God, or 
Christ, or the Word, was more or less in every man the Light 
which lightened him. I^etting alone formal phraseology, what I 
mean, and what Socrates meant, was this, to confound people's 
notions and theories, only to bring them to look their own reason' 
in the face, and to tell them boldly, you know these things at heart 
already, if you will only look at what you know, and clear from 
your own spirit the mists which your mere brain and ' organization 
and truth,' has wrapt round them. Men may be at first more 
angry than ever at this ; they will think you accuse them of 
hypocrisy when you tell them ' you know that I am right, and you 
wrong : ' but it will do them good at last. It will bring them to 
the one great truth, that they too have a Teacher, a Guide, an 
Inspirer, a Father : that you are not asserting for yourself any 
new position, which they have not attained, but have at last found 
out the position which has been all along equally true of them auL. 
you, that you are all God's children, and that your Father's Love 
is going out to seek and to save them and you, by the only possible 
method, viz., teaching them that He is their Father. 

" I should advise you to stick stoutly by old Paley. He is 
right at root, and I should advise you, too, to make your boast of 
Baconian Induction being on your side, and not on theirs ; for 
' many a man talks of Robin Hood who never shot in his bow,' 
and the ' Reasoner ' party, while they prate about the triumphs of 
science, never, it seems to me, employ intentionally in a single 
sentence the very inductive method whereby that science has 
triumphed. But these things perhaps you know as well as I. 

" For the end of your letter. Be of good cheer. When the 
wicked man turneth from his wickedness (then, there and then), 
he shall save his soul alive — as you seem to be consciously doing, 
and all his sin and his iniquity shall not be mentioned unto him. 
What your 'measure' of guilt (if there can be a measure of the 
incommensurable spiritual) I know not. But this I know, that as 
long as you keep the sense of guilt alive in your own mind, you 
will remain justified in God's mind ; as long as you set your sins 
before your face. He will set them behind His back. Do you ask 
how I know that ? I will not quote ' texts,' though there are 



Systematic Work Healthful. 191 

dozens. I will not quote my own spiritual experience, though I 
could honestly : 1 will only say, that such a moral law is implied 
in the very idea of ' Our Father in heaven.' 

'■'■ P. S. — I have ordered ' Glaucus ' to be sent you. I wish you 
would consider especially pp. 69-80, 95-7, 100-103. I send you 
also Harvey's sea-side book, that you may read up the 'Echinus.' 
I think a lecture simply on the ' Echinus ' would astonish weak 
minds more utterly than anything I can guess at. I could help 
you to all facts. As for specimens, I could send you a few. But 
do you know Dr. Carpenter, at University Hall ? He is a good 
man, full of desire to teach workmen wisdom, and knows the 
' Echini' better than any man on earth. He might help you to 
facts and specimens better than I. But think it over. Can you 
make drawings ? Again, have you Hugh Miller's invaluable 
' Footprints of the Creation,' a corroboration of Paley against the 
' Vestiges,' drawn principally from the geology of his favorite Old 
Red Sandstone fishes? You will find it useful beyond any modern 
book. Also, you must get a sight of Owen's new collection of his 
Lectures. 

" My father wants to know if you have ever seen old Mendels- 
sohn's (the musician's grandfather) Answer to an Atheist at Ham- 
burgh. I have heard that the book is highly valuable. Do you 
know 'Kant's Theodicy?' It reveals A Being; but hardly a 
;^ather " 

Through the exertions of his friends, Thomas Cooper was now 
given copying work at the Board of Health, of which the Rt. 
Hon. William Cowper was then President : his hearers at the Hall 
of Science, already made bitter by his deserting the atheist camp, 
made the fact of his doing government work and taking govern- 
ment pay a fresh ground of opposition to his teaching, and Mr. 
Kingsley writes : 

Rectory, Chelsea, Jicne 14, 1856. 

" I called and asked for you at the Board of Health, but you 
were away ! You must not give up to low spirits — wait awhile, 
and all will be right. Get into harness, become a habitue of the 
place, get everyone's good word, and in six months you will be 
found out to be a ' valuable man ; ' and then, in due time, you may 
say what you like — and rise to something really worth having, 

" It is, I know it, a low aim (I don't mean morally) for a man 
who has had the aspirations which you have ; but may not Our 
Heavenly Father just be bringing you through this seemingly de- 
grading work, to give you what I should think you never had, — , 
what it cost me, bitter sorrow to learn — the power of working in 



192 Charles Kings ley. 

harness, and so actually drawing something, and being of real use. 
Be sure, if you can once learn that lesson, in addition to the rest 
you have learnt, you will rise to something worthy of you yet. My 
dear Cooper, you are a very clever man. But — don't you think 
that the God who made you is as fully aware of that fact as you or 
I ? And is it not probable that He is only keeping your powers 
seemingly useless, till you have learned to use them ? Now it has 
seemed to me, in watching you and your books, and your hfe, that 
just what you wanted was self-control. I don't mean that you 
could not starve, die piece-meal, for what you thought right ; for 
you are a brave man, and if you had not been, you would not have 
been alive now. But it did seem to me, that what you wanted was 
the quiet, stern cheerfulness, which sees that things are wrong, and 
sets to to right them, but does it trying to make the best of them all 
the while, and to see the bright side ; and even if, as often hap- 
pens, there be no bright side to see, still ' possesses his soul in pa- 
tience,' and sits whistling and working till ' the pit be digged for 
the ungodly.' 

" Don't be angry with me and turn round and say, ' You, sir, who 
never knew what it was to want a meal in your life, who belong 
to the successful class who have. What do you mean by preaching 
these cold platitudes to me ?' For, Thomas Cooper, I have 
known what it was to want things more precious to you, as well as 
to me, than a full stomach ; and I learnt — or rather 1 am learning 
a little — to wait for them till God sees good. And the man who 
wrote ' Alton Locke ' must know a little of what a man like you 
could feel to a man like me, if the devil entered into him. And 
yet I tell you, Thomas Cooper, that there was a period in my 
life — and one not of months, but for years, in which I would have 
gladly exchanged your circumstantia, yea, yourself, as it is now, 
for my circumstantia, and myself, as they were then. And yet I 
had the best of parents and a home, if not luxurious, still as good 
as any man's need be. You are a far happier man now, I firmly 
believe, than I was for years of my life. The dark cloud has past 
with me now.- Be but brave and patient, and (I will swear now), 
by God, sir ! it will pass with you." 

ytme 25, 1856. 

" I have had a sad time, for a dear friend has died suddenly, or I 
would have both written again to you, and called again ; but I could 
not recollect yovu" exact address, and could not get it at the Board 
of Health, and meanwhile this trouble came, and I had to exert 
myself for a poor dear man left with a family of young folk, and ut- 
terly broken-hearted. You are in the right way yet. I can put you 
in no more right way. Your sense of sin is not fanaticism ; it is, I 
suppose, simple consciousness of fact. As for helping you to Christ, 
I do not believe i can one inch. I see no hope but in prayer, in 



Knowledge of God. ' 193 

going to Him yourself, in saying : Lord if Thou art there, if Thou 
art at all, if this all be not a lie, fulfil Thy reputed promises, and 
give me peace and a sense of forgiveness, and the feeling that bad 
as I may be. Thou lovest me still, seeing all, understanding all, 
and therefore making allowances for all ! I have had to do that 
in past days ; to challenge Him through outer darkness and the 
silence of night, till I almost expected that He would vindicate 
His own honor by appearing visibly as He did to St. Paul and St. 
John ; but he answered in the still small voice only ; yet that was 
enough. 

" Read the book by all means ; but the book will not reveal 
Him. He is not in the book ; He is in the heaven which is as 
near you and me as the air we breathe, and out of that He must 
reveal Himself; — neither priests nor books can conjure him up, 
Cooper. Your Wesleyan teachers taught you, perhaps, to look for 
Him in the book, as Papists would have in the bread ; and when 
you found He was not in the book, you thought him nowhere ; but 
He is bringing you out of your first mistake and idolatry, ay, 
through it, and through all wild wanderings since, to know Him 
Himself, and speak face to face with Him as a man speaks with 
his friend. Have patience with Him. Has He not had patience 
with you ? And therefore have patience with all men and things ; 
and then you will rise again in His good time the stouter for your 
long battle. 

" As for worldly matters, there is nothing to be done now, but 
to trust God to give you the right work in His own good time. 
He has, you see, given you anchorage-ground when you fancied 
yourself utterly adrift. Oh, trust this earnest of His care, and 
' wait on Providence.' Men may misuse that expression into 
Micawber's cant, but there is an everlasting truth in it. In such a 
work as God is doing with you, He will have it all His own way, 
so that you shall have no chance of mistaking from whom the 
blessing comes. 

" Write again soon. Your letters are always pleasant to me. I 
should have answered this before ; but I have been living for three 
days on a vault, and a funeral, and the sight of utter woe." 



EVERSLEY, December 4, 1856. 

" Your letter is very cheering ; I wish I could tell you as much 
about probabilities as I can about natural history. 

"But, for the zoology, I will bring you up not only Cuvier, but 
all the books I can think of. Have you Hiiber on the bee ? It 
is old, but good. I will bring you Kirby and Spence's entomology, 
where you will find wonders on bees and ants. Moreover, I can 
help you, I think, with geological books.' Have you read Hitch- 
cock, who is making a noise now ? and did you ever see a ' Boy's 
13 



194 Charles Kingsley. 

Dream of Geology ' ? But the most important book for you is 
Sedgwick's 'Notes to his University Studies,' containing his refu- 
tation of the ' Vestiges of Creation.' I come to town the loth, 
and must have some talks with you, for now that we are got upon 
my ground of Natural History, I think I could do more to hel[) 
you in one talk than in three letters. A Lecture on Physical 
Geography, as showing God's providence and care of man, might 
be effective. Do you know 'Guyot's Earth and Man' ? an admir- 
able book, which I can bring. I am going to get you Agassiz's 
opening lecture to the British Association this year, which will be 
quite invaluable to you. Borrow from some one Orr's ' Circle of 
the Sciences' : with Owen's ' Tractate on Physiology.' " 



56 Marina, St., Leonard's, May q^ 1857. 

" About endless torment. (Keep that expression distinct from 
eternal., which has been mixed up with it, the former being what 
the popular creed really holds.) You may say, 

" I. Historically, that, 

" a. The doctrine occurs nowhere in the Old Testament, or any 
hint of it. The expression, in the end of Isaiah, about the fire un- 
quenched, and the worm not dying, is plainly of the dead corpses 
of men upon the physical earth, in the valley of Hinnom, or Ge- 
henna, where the offal of Jerusalem was burned perpetually. En- 
large on this, as it is the passage which our Lord quotes, and by it 
the meaning of His words must be primarily determined. 

" b. The doctrine of endless torment was, as a historical fact, 
brought back from Bab)'lon by the Rabbis. It was a very ancient 
])rimary doctrine of the Magi, an appendage of their fire-kingdom 
of Ahriman, and may be found in the old Zends, long prior to 
Christianity. 

" <r. St. Paul accepts nothing of it as far as we can tell, never 
making the least allusion to the doctrine. 

" d. The Apocalypse simply repeats the imagery of Isaiah, and 
of our Lord ; but asserts, distinctly, the non-endlessness of torture, 
declaring that in the consummation, not only death, but Hell, shall 
be cast into the Lake of Fire. ■ 

" e. The Christian Church has never really held it exclusively, 
till now. It remained quite an open question till the age of Jus- 
tinian, 530, and significantly enough, as soon as 200 years before 
that, endless torment for the heathen became a popular theory, pur- 
gatory sprang up synchronously by the side of it, as a relief for the 
conscience and reason of the Church. 

"/". Since the Reformation, it has been an open question in the 
English Church, and the philosophical Platonists, of the i6th and 
17th centuries, always considered it as such. 

'■'• g. The Church of England, bv the deliberate expunging of the 



Endless Torinent. 195 

42nd Article, which affirmed endless punishment, has declared it 
authoritatively to be open. 

" h. It is so, in fact. Neither Mr. Maurice, I, or any others, who 
have denied it, can be dispossessed or proceeded against legally in 
any way whatsoever. 

" Exegetically, you may say, I think, a. That the meanings of 
the word oXwv and atwtos have little or nothing to do with it, 
even if atwv be derived from det always, which I greatly doubt. The 
word never is used in Scripture anywhere else, in the sense of end- 
lessness (vulgarly called eternity). It always meant, both in Scrip- 
ture and out, a period of time. Else, how could it have a plural 
■ — how could you talk of the seons, and seons of aeons, as the Scrip- 
ture does ? Nay, more, how talk of oSros o aicov, which the trans- 
lators with laudable inconsistency, have translated ' this world,' i.e., 
this present state of things, *Age,' 'dispensation,' or epoch — 
aiajv6o§, therefore, means, and must mean, belonging to an epoch, 
or the epoch, and atwnos KoAao-ts is the punishment allotted to that 
epoch. Always bear in mind, what Maurice insists on, — and 
what is so plain to honest readers, — that our Lord, and the 
Apostles, always speak of being in the end of an age or aeon, not as 
ushering in a new one. Come to judge and punish the old world, 
and to create a new one out of its ruins, or rather as the S. S. bet- 
ter expresses it, to burn up the chaff and keep the wheat, i.e.. all 
the elements of food as seed for the new world. 

" I think you may say, that our Lord took the popular doctrine 
because He found it, and tried to correct and purify it, and put it 
on a really moral ground. You may quote the parable of Dives and 
Lazarus (which was the emancipation from the Tartarus theory) as 
the one instance in which our Lord professedly opens the secrets 
of the next world, that He there represents Dives as still Abraham's 
child, under no despair, not cut oif from Abraham's sympathy, and 
under a direct moral training, of which you see the fruit. He is 
gradually weaned from the selfish desire of indulgence for himself, 
to love and care for his brethren, a divine step forward in his life, 
which of itself proves him not to be lost. The impossibility of 
Lazarus getting to him, or vice versa, expresses plainly the great 
truth, that each being where he ought to be at that time, inter- 
change of place {i.e., of spiritual state) is impossible. But it says 
nothing against Dives rising out of his torment, when he has learnt 
the lesson of it, and going where he ought to go. The connuon 
interpretation is merely arguing in a circle, assuming that there are 
but two states of the dead, ' Heaven ' and ' Hell,' and then trying 
at once to interpret tlie parable by the assumption, and to prove 
the assumption from the parable. Next, you may say that the 
English damnation, like the Greek KarciKpto-is, is perhaps Kpttris sim- 
ple, simply means condemnation, and is (thank God) retained in 
that sense in various of our formularies, where I always read it, e.g.. 



196 Charles Kingsley. 

* eateth to himself damnation,' with sincere pleasure, as protests in 
favor of the true and rational meaning of the word, against the 
modern and narrower meaning. 

" You may say that Fire and Worms, whether physical or spirit- 
ual, must in all logical fairness be supposed to do what fire and 
worms do do, viz., destroy decayed and dead matter, and set free its 
elements to enter into new organisms; that, as they are beneficent 
and purifying agents in this life, they must be supposed such in the 
future life, and that the conception of fire as an engine of torture, 
is an unnatural use of that agent, and not to be attributed to God 
without blasphemy, unless you suppose that the suffering (like all 
which He inflicts) is intended to teach man something which he 
cannot learn elsewhere. 

" You may say that the catch, ' All sin deserves infinite punish- 
ment, because it is against an infinite Being,' is a worthless amphi- 
boly, using the word infinite in two utterly diff'erent senses, and 
being a mere play on sound. That it is directly contradicted by 
Scripture, especially by our Lord's own words, which declare that 
every man (not merely the wicked) shall receive the due reward of 
his deeds, that he who, &c., shall be beaten with few stripes, and so 
forth. That the words ' He shall not go out till he has paid the ut- 
termost farthing, evidently imply (unless spoken in cruel mockery) 
that he may go out then, and that it is scandalous for Protestants 
to derive from thence the opposite doctrine, while they call the 
Papists rogues for proving the perpetual virginity of the B. V. Mary 
from exactly the same use of Iws. 

" Finally, you may call on them to rejoice that there is a fire of 
God the Father whose name is Love, burning for ever unquench- 
ably, to destroy out of every man's heart and out of the hearts of 
all nations, and off" the physical and moral world, all which offends 
and makes a lie. That into that fire the Lord will surely cast all 
shams, lies, hypocrisies, tyrannies, pedantries, false doctrines, yea, 
and the men who love them too well to give them up, that the 
smoke of their /5acravtcr/Aos (i.e., the torture which makes men con- 
fess the truth, -for that is the real meaning of it ; (SaaavLo-fxo^ means 
the toi/c/i-stone by which gold was tested) may ascend perpetually, 
for a warning and a beacon to all nations, as the smoke of the tor- 
ment of French aristocracies, and Bourbon dynasties, is ascending 
up to Heaven and has been ever since 1793. Oh, Cooper — Is it 
not good news that t/iat fire is unquenchable ; that t/iat worm will 
not die ? They tried, 7e'e tried in our ignorance, to quench that 
fire when we put Louis XVHL on the throne. But the fire burned 
up him and our chaffy works. The parti pretre tried to kill the 
worm which was gnawing at their hearts, making them dimly aware 
that they were wrong, and liars, and that God and His universe 
were against them, and that they and their system were rotting and 
must die. And they put poor Poerios and Madiais in prison, and 



Letters to Thomas Cooper. 197 

show all the signs of weak terror, suspicion, spite : but they cannot 
kill God's worm, Thomas Cooper. You cannot look in the face of 
many a working continental priest without seeing that the worm is 
at his heart. You cannot watch their conduct without seeing that 
it is at the heart of their system. God grant that we here in Eng- 
land — we parsons (dissenting and church) may take warning by 
them. The fire may be kindled for us. The worm may seize our 
hearts. To judge by the temper of the ' Record ' and the ' Morn- 
ing Advertiser,' it has its fangs va. some of our hearts already. God 
grant that in that day we may have courage to let the fire and the 
worm do their work — to say to Christ, These too are thine, and 
out of thine infinite love they have come. Thou requirest truth in 
the inward parts, and I will thank Thee for any means, however 
bitter, which thou usest to make me true. I want to be an honest 
man, and a right man ! And, oh joy, TJioii wantest me to be so 
also. Oh joy, that though I long cowardly to quench Thy fire, I 
cannot do it. Purge us, therefore, oh Lord, though it be with fire. 
Burn up the chatf of vanity and self-indulgence, of hasty prejudices, 
second-hand dogmas, — husks which do not feed my soul, with 
which I cannot be content, of which I feel ashamed daily — and if 
there be any grains of wheat in me, any word or thought or power 
of action which may be of use as seed for my nation after me, 
gather it, oh Lord, into Thy garner. 

" Yes, Thomas Cooper. Because I believe in a God of Abso- 
lute and Unbounded Love, therefore I believe in a Loving Anger 
of His, which will and must devour and destroy all which is 
decayed, monstrous, abortive in His universe, till all enemies shall 
be put under His feet, to be pardoned surely, if they confess them- 
selves in the wrong, and open their eyes to the truth. And God 
shall be All in All. 

" Those last are wide words. It is he who limits them, not 
I who accept them in their fulness, who denies the verbal inspira- 
tion of Scripture." 

St. Leonard's, May 20, 1857. 

" I have been silent, not because I have forgotten. I have been 
thinking earnestly on your letter, and this is a fragment of what I 
think. 

" Your anecdotes of Romaine and Clarke, &c., are new to me, 
but not surprising, and most significant. I can understand well 
how men, who considered the business of life to be the delivering 
men from a fancied Tartarus, to save them //-(?;« God in fact — who 
intended to move them into endless torture, were quite unable to 
conceive of the Son as the express image of the Father. How 
could He be, if the Father intended to damn, and the Son to save ? 
Thus the Godhead of the Son became to them a necessary part of 
their scheme of redemption, only because unleis He were God, 



198 Charles Kings ley. 

His ' satisfaction ' and His ' merits ' would not be ' infinite,' and 
the Trinity became a mere function of the ' scheme of redemp- 
tion,' that again being a function of the 'fall.' 

" This I have seen long, having been brought up among the 
evangelicals ; but I never knew that their old j^rophets had stated 
it so naively. But see what follows — what has followed in Geneva 
and Germany — what followed with you — when the Tartarus and 
the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction became incredible, then the 
Divinity of Christ, becoming imnecessary, fell to the ground like- 
wise — and socinianism, and at last deism, followed as a matter of 
course. Think this out for yourself. It is historically as well as 
logically true. 

" Now with me. As I have told you, my reason demands a co- 
equal and co-eternal Son, in order that He may be an ideal and 
absolute Son at all. Adam Clarke's ' eternal generation being 
eternal nonsense,' is a very rash, foolish, ignorant speech ; but 
pardonable to a man of Locke's school, and therefore unable to 
conceive of an ever-present and unceasing eternity, but referring 
all things to the conditions of time — unable to conceive that an 
eternal generation means an ever-present and unceasing one, by 
which the Father saith at every and all moments of time, ' Thou 
art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.' It is this Lockism 
which infects all our pulpits, which makes even educated men un- 
able to understand Maurice. 

" But my heart. Cooper, demands the Trinity, as much as my 
reason. I want to be sure that God cares for us, that God is our 
Father, that God lias interfered, stooi)ed, sacrificed Himself for us. 
I do not merely want to love Christ — a Christ, some creation or 
emanation of God's — whose will and character, for aught 1 know, 
may be different from God's. I want to love and honor the abso- 
lute, abysmal God Himself, and none other will satisfy me — and in 
the doctrine of Christ being co-equal and co-eternal, sent by, sacri- 
ficed by, His Father, that he might do His Father's will, 1 find it 
— and no puzzfing texts, like those you quote, shall rob me of that 
rest for my heart, that Christ is the exact counterpart of Him in 
whom we live, and move, and have our being. The texts are few, 
^only two after all ; on them I wait for light, as I do on many more ; 
meanwhile, I say boldly, if the doctrine be not in the Bible, it 
ought to be, for the whole spiritual nature of man cries out for it. 
Have you read Maurice's essay on the Trinity in his theological 
essays ? addressed to Unitarians ? If not, you must read it. 

" About the word Trinity, I feel much as you do. It seems un- 
fortunate that the name of God should be one which expresses a 
• mere numerical abstraction, and not a moral property. It has, I 
think, helped to make men forget that God is a Spirit — that is, a 
moral being, and that moral spiritual, and that morality (in the 
absolute) is God, as St. John saith God is love, and he that dwelleth 



Letters to Thomas Cooper. 199 

in love dwelleth in God, and God in him — words which, were they 
not happily in the Bible, would be now called rank and rampant 
Pandieism. But, Cooper, I have that faith in Christ's right govern- 
ment of the human race, that I have good hope that He is keeping 
the word Trinity, only because it has not yet done its work ; when 
it has. He will inspire men with some better one. 

The following is the last letter which passed between the two 
friends : 

EvERSLEY, September 23, 1872. 

" My dear Thomas Cooper, 

'• I have been wandering for nearly a fortnight, the only scrap 
of holiday I have had for two years, and only found your book and 
letter yesterday. But I have read through your ' Plain Pulpit 
Talk ' in two evenings, and I am a close and critical reader, and 
with delight. That a man of your genius and learning should have 
done the thing well does not surprise me. The delight to me is 
■ , the thing which you have done. 

" I see the thorough right old morality — common to puritans, 
old Anglican Churchmen, apostles, and prophets ; that you hold 
right to be infinitely right ; and wrong ditto wrong; that you call a 
spade a spade, and talk to men about the real plagues of their own 
heart ; as Carlyle says, you ' do not rave against extinct Satans, 
while quite unaware of the real man-devouring Satan at your elbow.' 
My dear friend, go on and do that, and whether you call yourself 
Baptist or Buddhist, I shall welcome you as one who is doing the 
work of God, and fighting in the battle of the Lord, who makes 
war in righteousiiess. But more. You are no Buddhist, nor even 
an Unitarian 

" I happen to be, from reason and science as well as from Scrip- 
ture and Catholic tradition (I use a word I don't like, but you who 
have read know that there is no better one as yet), I happen to be, 
I say, an orthodox theologian, and to value orthodoxy more the 
more I think, for its own sake. And it was a solid pleasure to me 
to find you orthodox, and to find you deriving your doctrines con- 
cerning right and wrong, and the salvation of men, from orthodox 
theology. — Pp. 128, 131, is a speech of which no sound divine, 
either of the Church of England or of the middle age, ought to be 
ashamed. . . . But, my dear friend, whatever you do, don't 
advocate disestablishing us. We are the most liberal religious body 
in these realms. In our pale men can meet who can meet nowhere 
else. Would to God you belonged to us, and we had your powers, 
as we might have without your altering your creed, with us. But 
if we — the one remaining root of union — we disestablish and become 
a sect like the sects, then competition, not Christ will be God, and 
we shall bite and devour one another, till atheism and M. Comte 



200 Charles Kingsley. 

are the rulers of modern thought. I am not mad, but speak the 
words of truth and soberness; and remember (I am sure you will, 
though orators at public meetings would not) that my plea is quite 
disinterested. If the Church of England were disestablished and 
disendowed to-morrow, vested interests would be respected, and I 
and others living on small incomes till our deaths. I assure you 
that I have no family livings, or an intention of putting my sons 
into them. My eldest son — a splendid young fellow — is roughing, 
it successfully and honorably as an engineer anywhere between 
Denver, U. S., and the city of Mexico. My next and only other 
son may possibly go to join him. I can give no more solid proof 
that, while Radical cockneys howl at me as an aristocrat and a 
renegade, I am none ; but a believer in the persons of my own 
children, that a man's a man for a' that." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

1854. 
Aged 35. 

Torquay — Seaside Studies — Lectures in Edinburgh — Deutsche Theologie — Letter 
from Baron Bunsen — Crimean War — Settles in North Devon — Writes 
" Wonders of the Shore " and " Westward Ho." 

*' ToRBAY is a place which should be as much endeared to the 
naturalist as to the patriot and to the artist. We cannot gaze on 
its blue ring of water and the great limestone bluffs which bound it 
to the north and south without a glow passing through our hearts, 
as we remember the terrible and glorious pageant which passed by- 
it in the bright days of July, 1588, when the Spanish Armada 
ventured slowly past Berry Head, with Elizabeth's gallant pack of 
Devon captains (for the London fleet had not yet joined), following 
past in its wake, and dashing into the midst of the vast line, undis- 
mayed by size and numbers, while their kin and friends stood 
watching and praying on the cliffs, spectators of Britain's Salamis. 
The white line of houses, too, on the other side of the bay, is 
Brixham, famed as the landing-place of William of Orange ; and 
the stone on the pier-head, which marks his first footprints on 
British ground, is sacred in the eyes of all true English Whigs ; and 
close by stands the castle of the settler of Newfoundland, Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's half-brother, most learned of all 
Elizabeth's admirals in life, most pious and heroic in death. And 
as for scenery, though it can boast of neither mountain-peak nor 
dark fiord, and would seem tame enough in the eyes of a Western 
Scot or Irishman, yet Torbay has a soft beauty of its own, in the 
rounded hills which slope into the sea, spotted with parks full of 
stately timber trees, with squares of emerald grass and rich red 
fallow fields, each parted from the other by the long line of tall 
elms, just flushing green in the Spring hedges, which run down to 
the very water's edge, their boughs un warped by any blast ; and 
here and there apple orchards, just bursting into flower in the 
Spring sunshine, and narrow strips of water meadow, where the 



202 Charles Kings ley. 

red cattle are already lounging knee-deep in richest grass, within 
ten yards of the rocky, pebble beach, which six hours hence will 
be hurling columns of rosy foam high into the sunlight, and 
sprinkling passengers, and cattle, and trim gardens, which hardly 
know what frost and snow may be, but see the flowers of Autumn 
meet the flowers of Spring, and the old year linger smiUngly to 
twine a garland for the new." * 

In these words Mr. Kingsley describes Torquay, where he 
passed the winter and spring in 1854, during a leave of absence- 
granted him by the Bishop on account of his wife's health, which 
had suffered severely from the damp rectory at Eversley. 

At this time, and for some years to come, the clergy of all 
parties in the Church stood aloof from him as a suspected person. 
The attacks of the religious press, perhaps happily for him, had so 
alarmed the clergy of Torquay, High Church and Evangelical, 
that all pulpit doors were closed against the author of " Alton 
Locke," " Yeast," and " Hypatia," and he spent quiet peaceful 
Sundays with his wife and children for the first time for many years. 
Once only he was asked to preach in the parish church, and once 
at the chapel of St. John, in a Lenten week-day service, when the 
congregation, a High Church one, were surprised at his reverent 
and orthodox views on the Holy Eucharist. It was a resting time, 
and the temporary cessation from sermon writing and parish work 
was very grateful to him, " a combination of circumstances having, 
during the last year," he wrote to a friend, " so utterly exhausted 
me, physically and intellectually, that I must lie very quiet for a 
time, and I look forward with some dread even to the research 
necessary to make my Edinburgh Lectures what they ought to be." 
Once settled at Livermead, the father and children spent happy 
hours on the shore, bringing home treasures every afternoon from 
the rocks and sands, and from occasional dredging expeditions in 
Tor Bay, to be classified and arranged in the vivarium, and to 
amuse the invalid. A daily journal of natural history was kept, 
and hampers of sea beasts, live shells, and growing seaweed sent 
off to Mr. H. P. Gosse, then living in London. 

This sea-side life led to a voluminous correspondence, illustrated 
by his own beautiful sketches, the contents of which were summed 



* The " Wonders of the Shore," p. 15. 



New Treasures. 203 

up in an article in the " North British Review " on " The Won- 
ders of the Shore." This article, afterwards developed into 
" Glaucus," contained not only sketches of natural history, but 
some of his deepest thoughts on theology as connected with the 
Transmutation Theory and " The Vestiges of Creation." 

At this time, while treading in the footsteps of Colonel George 
Montagu, whose lynx eyes had espied them nearly in the same 
spot fifty years before, he found washed ashore, in a cave neai 
Goodrington, after a succession of south-easterly gales, a number of 
Montagu's Chirodota {Synapta digitata) which had not been seen 
in the interval. Of these he made many drawings, while, with 

dehght, he studied their strange contortions ; and he writes : 

TO H. p. GOSSE, ESQ. 

LlVERMEAD, Januaiy 3, 1854. 

"I jot down what I see of my pink chirodotas, (?) in case yours 
die. They are quite distinct from scolanthus ; their power is one 
of ^(?«traction, not of retraction : have no retractile longitudinally- 
lined proboscis, and the tentacula from the mouth are twelve in 
number, not fourteen, and are compound, not simple. Their form 
is this : carrying a boss or thumb at the back of the quadri-palmate 
horns, tlie smooth palm turned towards the mouth. These arms 
are continually curving inward to an invisible mouth, generally in 
alternate pairs, thus : 

" You will see by my rough sketch what I mean. I can discern 
no solid matter passing into the mouth from their strokes. They 
are never spread out in a ring as in Johnstone's figure. 

" One has parted with his tail, in the form of a globe of half inch 
diameter, from which hang many white filaments, two inches long. 
Another (perhaps the same) has two similar filaments protruding 
from his tail, which under a quarter inch power, are full of white 
globular granules in a glairy mucus. — I can see no more. AH these 
filaments are knotted. The red spots are continued up the back 
of the arms to the thumb. The body is covered with minute papil- 
IcG (?) and irregular transverse wrinkles, along the salient ridges of 
which the red spots generally run. The red spots become more 
irregular toward the head, and delicate longitudinal pale lines ap- 
pear between them. 

" I have just been watching the dismemberment of a specimen. 
It first threw off, without my seeing, a piece about an inch long, 
with the white filaments protruding at each end ; then recom- 
menced by a constriction an inch from the end ; the part beyond 
the constriction rapidly swelled and contracted to half inch, and 
began a series of violent rotations from right to left, till it had 



204 Charles Kingsley, 

turned itself more than half round on the longitudinal (fig. 2) axis. 
This circular wrenching continued principally in the part about to 
separate (which was much more lively than the body of the animal) 
till the part nearest it swelled and became transparent, disclosing 
four muscular (?) bands, as in fig. 3. A second constriction and 
rotations then took place, and I witnessed the separation, as in fig. 
4, but no filaments escaped. The first parted bit remains very 
lively. The parent animal was feeding busily with all its hands the 
whole time. 

"The animal has during the night broken itself into six pieces, 
the filaments protruding at the point of separation or anterior end 
in each. The process has hurt the water, making it milky ; of the 
Holothurice, the brown have contracted both tentacula and suck- 
ers, the white only the suckers, and, taking in a reef in their tenta- 
cula, have inflated their heads with water, the mouth pouting in the 
centre, like an auricula. 

" N.B. — I have seen Cyprea Europjea during the last few days 
suspend itself from the under-side of low-tide rocks by a glutinous 
thread, an inch and more in length ; and when in captivity float 
on the surface by means of a similar thread attached to a glutinous 
bubble. Johnstone does not mention this. 

"All the specimens of chirodota have since gone the same way, 
and become dissolving views, plus an evil and sour smell." 

In the well-stocked vivarium at home he could study the ways 
of the lovely little Eolis papillosa, the bright lemon-colored Doris, 
and the Cucumaria Hyndmanii, with their wondrous gills and 
feathers — to common eyes mere sea-slugs, — and varieties of Ser- 
pulae, with their fairy fringes only visible at happy moments to 
those who have the patience to watch and wait for the sight ; while 
the more minute forms of the exquisite Campanularia Syringa and 
Volubilis, and the Sertularii, and that " pale pink flower of stone," 
the Caryophyllia Smithii, with numberless others, were examined 
under the microscope. Before leaving Torquay he made a rough 
list of about sixty species of MoUusks, Annelids, Crustacea, and 
Polypes found on the shore, nearly all new to him, and revealing a 
new world of wonders to his wife and children. 

To this period, his distinguished friend Professor Max Miiller, 
who came to see him at Livermead, refers when he speaks of him 
" on the Devonshire coast watching the beauty and wisdom of 
Nature, reading her solemn lessons, and chuckling, too, over her 
inimitable fun." The "inimitable fun " was enjoyed in watching 
the movements and manners of the family of the Crustacea, espe- 



Lecturing in Edinburgh. 205 

cially the soldier crab, of which he had always several specimens 
in the vivarium, which were an inexhaustible source of merriment 
to him, and which yet led him at the same moment to some of the 
deep, strange speculations hinted at so reverently in the pages of 
" Glaucus." 

But these pursuits, however enchanting, did not engross him to 
the forgetfulness of the great social questions of the day, and 
early in the year we find him writing to Sir Arthur Helps, about 
Sanitary matters, and urging the clergy to turn their minds to the 
subject. 

In February he went to Edinburgh to deliver four lectures on 
the "Schools of Alexandria," at the Philosophical Institute. It 
was his first visit to Scotland, and he writes to his wife : 

Warriston, Wednesday. 

"The lecture went off well. I was dreadfully nervous, and 
actually cried with fear up in my own room beforehand ; but after 
praying I recovered myself, and got through it very well, being 

much cheered and clapped All the notabilities came, 

and were introduced to me ; and I had some pleasant talk with 
Sir James Maxwell. Mr. Erskine, of Linlathen, is a charming old 
man. 

" My second lecture went off better than the first, in spite of the 
delicate points on which it touched. Nothing can exceed the cor- 
diality of people." 

Warriston, February 26. 

•' It is at last over, and I start for England to-morrow. The last 

lecture was more crowded than ever Altogether it 

has been (if you had but been with me, and alas ! that poisons 
everything) one of the most pleasant and successful episodes in 
my life. I have not met with a single disagreeable — have been 
heaped with kindness. I have got my say said without giving 
offence, and have made friends which I hope will last for life. I 
have seen the very best society in Scotland, and I cannot be thank- 
ful enough to God for having sent me here, and carried me through. 
To-night I dine with Sir * * * * * * a perfect fine gentleman of 
the old school, who was twenty-five years in parliament, and ap- 
proves highly of ' Alton Locke ' and ' Yeast ; ' as also does his 
wife, who told me I had a glorious career before me, and bade 
God speed me in it." .... 

Returning from Scotland he stopped in London to see how Mr. 



2o6 Charles Kingsley. 

Maurice's affairs were going on, on his way to Eversley, where he 
had to remain during a change of curates. 

" I have just seen Archdeacon Hare, who is looking better; but 
this business of Maurice's has fretted him horribly. 1/ * * is work- 
ing, tooth and nail, for Maurice in Lincoln' s-inn ; and the working 
men in London, including many of the old Chartists of 1848, are 
going to present a grand address to Maurice in St. Martin's Hall, 
at which, I believe, I am to be a chairman. Kiss the babes for 
me, and tell them 1 long to be with them on Tor sands. 

" Did I ever tell you of my delightful chat with Bunsen ? I have 
promised him to write a couple of pages preface to Miss Winkworth's 
translation of the ' Deutsche Theologie.' Oh ! how you will revel 
in that book ! . . . ." 

The anxieties and expenses of illness were very heavy just now, 
but he always met them by a brave heart and by cheering words, 
to one who lamented the labor they entailed on him. 

EvERSLEY, February. 

" . . . . And — these very money difficulties 

Has it not been fulfilled in them, ' As thy day so shall thy strength 
be ? ' Have we ever been in any debt by our own sin ? Have 
we ever really wanted anything we needed ? Have we not had 
friends, credit, windfalls — in all things, with the temptation, a way 
to escape ? Have they not been God's sending? God's way of 
preventing the cup of bliss being over sweet (and I thank him 
heartily it has «<?/been) ; and, consider, have they not been blessed 
lessons? But do not think that I am content to endure them any 
more than the race horse, because he loves running, is content to 
stop in the middle of the course. To pay them, I have thought, 
I have written, I have won for us a name which, please God, 
may last among the names of English writers. Would you give 
up the books I have written that we might never have been in 
difficulties ? So out of evil God brings good ; or rather, out of 
necessity He brings strength — and, believe me, the highest spirit- 
ual training is contained in the most paltry physical accidents ; 
and the meanest actual want, may be the means of caUing into 
actual life the possible but slee])ing embryo of the very noblest 
faculties. This is a great mystery ; but we are animals, in time 
and space ; and by time and space and our animal natures, are we 
educated. Therefore let us be only patient, patient ; and let God 
our Father teach His own lesson. His own way. Let us try to 
learn it well, and learn it quickly ; but do not let us fancy that He 
will ring the school-bell, and send us to play before our lesson is 
learnt. 



Bunseit and the Deutsche Theologie. 207 

" Therefore '■ rejoice in your youth, ere the days come when 
thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.' But make to yourself 
no ghosts. And remember he who says, ' 1 will be happy some 
day,' never will be happy at all. If we cannot be happy now 
with ten times the blessings which nine-tenths of God's creatures 
have, we shall never be happy though we lived a thousand years. 
Let us lay this solemnly to heart, and take no thought for the 
morrow." 

February 27. 

" The Guards march to-morrow ! How it makes one's blood 
boil ! We send 10,000 picked men to Malta, en route for Con- 
stantinople, and the French 60,000." 

EvERSLEY, Ash Wednesday, March, 1854. 

" . . . . The ' Deutsche Theologie ' is come from Bunsen : 
i.e.^ both Miss Wink worth's MSS. and Mrs. Malcolm's printed 
translation. Pray order Mrs. Malcolm's ' Old German Theology,* 
with a preface by Martin Luther. You never read so noble a 
book. The Reform Bill is shelved : excellent as it is, it does not 
much matter at this minute. Two days after our deputation, that 
bane of London, the Sewers Commission, awoke in the morning, 
and behold they were all dead men ! Lord Palmerston, having 
abolished them by one sentence the night before, and I have not 
heard that any one is gone into mourning. The Board of Health 
are now triumphant and omnipotent. God grant that they may 
use their victory well, and not spoil it by pedantry and ideaUsm ! 
Baines (capital man that he is !) brings in three clauses, which will 
reform the whole poor-law, and strike at the root of cottage-de- 
struction. The squires intend to show fight." 

In reference to the evidence he gave on sanitary matters as one 
of a deputation to Lord Palmerston, he says : 

" I had an opportunity of teUing Lord Palmerston a great deal 
which I trust may save many lives. Remember, it is now a 
question of blood-guiltiness — that is all. But I am not going to 
London any more about sanitary matters. The utter inability 
of the Health of Towns Act to cleanse this or any other neigh- 
boring parish made me consider what I have done as a parochial 
duty " 

The "Deutsche Theologie" was translated by Miss Susanna 
Winkworth at Chevalier Bunsen's request, and Mr. Kingsley was 
asked to write a preface. He had objections, and consulted Mr. 
Maurice, who answered him thus : 



2o8 Charles Kingsley. 

" I think your objections have great force, but I do not see that 
they need prevent you from stating your conviction that, as a 
practical work on Ethics, the book fully deserves to be translated and 
read ; and that the discovery of the only correct MSS. is a reason 
for introducing it to the public at this time. The religious people 
-have no right to be scandalized by any thing that Lvither and 
Spenser sanctioned. You can say that you, being more severely 
orthodox than they were, cannot swallow all the sentences in it, 
esteeming them to be too mystical and not quite scriptural, but 
that nevertheless your judgment in the main jumps with the great 
Evangelical authorities, and that you conceive they were anxious 
to enlist such a witness against the self-seeking tendencies of the 
religion of their time, as you and the translator are to claim him 
for the same purpose in this day " 

Chevalier Bunsen writes in the same strain : 

" My dear Friend, 

" My practical proposal coincides with that of Maurice. Keep 
to the ethic point, and refer as to the metaphysical terminology to 
Luther. I may, if required, say a word in the letter to Miss W. 
about this point, although it would be much better for the book and 
its readers if you, a clergymen of the Church of England, did it 
instead. Now, having said so much, let me add a word on the 
great subject itself. When I read your Preface to Hypatia (which 
you know I think does not justice to the book), I thought I per- 
ceived you had accepted the council-creeds more historically than 
penetrated them philosophically. Otherwise you could not have 
praised so much what I must believe to be only a great logical, 
formal ingenuity, but compared with St. John and the apostohc 
fathers down to Tertullian*and Origen, a perfect and thorough 
misunderstanding, like that of an anatomist taking the corpse for 
the living body. The more I study and think, the stronger that 
conviction grows, for the inward witness goes with the outward. 
You will see that my whole new volume has its centre in pointing 
to facts which show that I cannot say less than what I do say ; 
that our Confessions of Faith, if taken as making law, must be said 
frankly to be confessions of the blunders of those who drew them 
up : like the failure in an equation. The X is not made out, and 
this is confessed. 

"I have been at this point from 1817, when the Theologia Ger- 
manica came into my hands at Rome. My Aphorisms,^ if you 
read them with reference to this, will tell you more. 

" The difference of God and Man, of the Logos, Christ and the 
individual Christian, is that of the Infinite and the Finite, neither 

* " Hippolytiis," vol. ii., first edition (1852). 



Before the House of Commons. 209 

more nor less. This is nothing to those for whom nothing exists 
which is not in space and time ; but much, and enough for all who 
know that the finite — world and man — has no other key to its un- 
derstanding except the infinite. No Werden without the Sein — rb 
ovTiuq ov = 6 ovTug ojv. 

" Now the Theologia Germanica says nothing more in the most 
startling passages. But certainly we have learnt to say it better, 
and you, the English, ought to help us to say it still better. For 
this reason I have tortured my brains and your language, in laying 
before you the Aphorisms. 

" See whether we meet on this divine road. Excuse the hurried 
and imperfect writing. I hope Mrs. Kingsley is continuing better. 
A great anxious time of judgment is now hanging over Germany. 
Detis providebit ! I correct two proof-sheets every day. 

" Ever yours faithfully, 

" BUNSEN." 

These letters decided him, and he wrote to Miss Winkworth : 

Torquay, March 25, 1854. 

" I am conquered. I have written the preface this day, and 
will send the MSS. on Monday. Pray translate that Unterschled 
der Personen (if you can) ' the distinction of the persons : ' and 
then we shall be at least, on that point, a I'abri du diable. I 
believe Maurice is right. Pray show the preface to him and Bun- 
sen, and whomsoever you like, that we may get the help of any 
suggested improvement." 

After the book had been out some time he writes again to Miss 
Winkworth : 

"You will be glad to hear, I am sure, that your Theologia is 
being valued by every one to whom I have shown it. Sure I am 
that the book will do very great and lasting good." 

In the spring he went up to give evidence on two subjects which 
he had much at heart before the House of Commons on Sanitary 
Matters and on the insufficient pay of Parish Medical Officers. 
His experience of eleven years in a parish had convinced him that 
the pay of the parish doctor was much too low ; and he willingly 
gave evidence on the subject, dwelling particularly on the fact that 
under their present salaries no medical men could afford, or be 
expected, to give two of the most important but most expensive 
medicines — quinine and cod-liver oil. 
14 



2IO Charles Kings ley. 

TO HIS WIFE. 

Chelsea Rectory, May, 1854. 

" I am glad to have been up here. I have seen 

very much life, and learnt very much. It was just what I wanted 
after that Devon retirement. 1 went to meet Gosse at the I.in- 
na;an, and met Darwin (the Voyage of the Beagle). Such a noble 
face — as the average of the Linnseans, I must say, had. * * * * 
is a quiet, meek man, and was very anxious to know whether I and 
Maurice really ' denied the Atonement,' on which point, I think, I 
satisfied him. 

" We had a regular microscopic evening last night. George 

with his microscope, and Mr. H with his — both magnificent. 

The things they showed me were enough to strike one dumb. I 
am enjoying the thought of bringing Gosse' s book down to you. 
He has a whole chapter at the end on the things I sent him most 
kindly written. 

" Tell the dear children I long to see them, and will be home 
Wednesday, without fail " 

In the spring, as his wife was not allowed to return to the 
colder climate of North Hants, he settled with his family at 
Bideford, where his novel of " Westward Ho ! " was begun, 
whose opening pages describe his surroundings for the next twelve 
months. 

While there, a lady consulted him about joining a sisterhood, 
and he replies : 

Bideford, yttly 24, 1854. 
" Madam, 

" Though I make a rule of never answering any letter from a 
lady whom I have not the honor of knowing, yet I dare not refuse 
to answer yours. First, because you, as it were, challenge me on 
the ground of my books : and next, because you tell me that if I 
cannot satisfy you, you will do that, to prevent which, above all 
things, my books are written, namely, flee from the world, instead 
of staying in it and trying to mend it. 

" Be sure that I can sympathize with you most deeply in your 
dissatisfaction with all things, as they are. That feeling grows on 
me, as I trust in God (strange to say) it may grow on you, day by 
day. I, too, have had my dreams of New Societies, brotherhoods, 
and so forth, which were to regenerate the world. I, too, have had 
my admirations for Old Societies and brotherhoods like those of 
Loyola and Wesley, which intended to do the same thing. Bat I 
have discovered, Madam, that we can never really see how much 
evil there is around us, till we see how much good there is around 



Brotherhoods and Societies. 211 

us, just as it is light which makes us, by contrast, most aware of 
darkness. And I have discovered also, that the world is already 
regenerated by the Lord Jesus Christ, and that all efforts of our 
own to regenerate it are denials of Him and of the perfect regen- 
eration which He accomplished wlien He sat down on the right 
hand of God, having all power given to him in heaven and in 
earth, that He might rule the earth in righteousness for ever. And I 
have discovered also, that all societies and brotherhoods which 
may form, and which ever have been formed, are denials of the 
One Catholic Church of faitliful and righteous men (whether Pro- 
testant or Roman Catholic, matters not to me) which He has estab- 
lished on earth, and said that hell shall not prevail against it. And 
when I look back upon history, as I have done pretty carefully, I find 
that all such attempts have been total failures, just because, with 
the ])urest and best intentions, they were doing this, and thereby 
interfering with the Lord Jesus Christ's way of governing the 
world, and trying to introduce some new nostrum and panacea of 
their own, narrow and paltry, compared with His great ways in the 
deep. 

" Therefore, though Fox (to take your own example) was a most 
holy man, Quakerism in general, as a means of regenerating the 
world, has been a disastrous failure. And so (I speak from years 
of intimate experience) has good John Wesley's Methodist attempt. 
Both were trying to lay a new foundation for human society, and 
forgetting that one which was already laid, which is Christ, who 
surely has not been managing the earth altogether wrongly, Madam, 
for 1800 years, or even before that ? 

" So, again, with that truly holy and angelic man, St. Vincent de 
Paul — has he succeeded ? VVhat has become of education, and of the 
poor, in the very land where he labored ? God forbid that we Eng- 
lish should be in such a state, bad as we are ! The moment the per- 
sonal influence of his virtue was withdrawn, down tumbled all that 
he had done. He (may (rod bless him all the same) had no pana- 
cea for the world's ills. He was not a husband or a father — how 
could he teach men to be good husbands and fathers ? You point 
to what he and his did. 1 know what they did in South America, 
and beautiful it was : but, alas ! I know, too, that they could give 
no life to their converts ; they could not regenerate society among 
the savages of Paraguay ; and the moment the Jesuit's gentle des- 
potism was withdrawn, down fell the reductions again into savagery, 
having lost even the one savage virtue of courage. The Jesuits were 
shut out, by their vows, from political and family life. How could 
they teach their pupils the virtues which belong to those states ? 
But all Europe knows what the Jesuits did in a country where they 
had every chance ; where for a century they were the real rulers, 
in court and camp, as well as in schools and cloisters, 1 mean ii; 
France. They tried their very best (and tried, 1 am bound to be- 



212 Charles Kingsley. 

Heve, earnestly and with good intent) to regenerate France. And 
they caused the Revolution. Madam, the horrors of 1793 were the 
natural fruit of the teaching of the very men who not only would 
have died sooner than bring about these horrors, but died too many 
of them, alas ! by them. yXnd how was this ? By trying to set up 
a system of society and morals of their own, they, without knowing 
it, uprooted in the French every element of faith in, and reverence 
for, the daily duties and relations of human life, without knowing 
it — without meaning it. They would call me a slanderer if they 
saw my words, and would honestly think me so. May God keep 
you from the same snare, of fancying, as all ' Orders,' Societies, 
and Sects do, that they invent a better system of society than the 
old one, wherein God created man in His own image, viz., of father 
and son, husband and wife, brother and sister, master and servant, 
king and subject. Madam, these are more divine and godlike 
words than all the brotherhoods, ' Societies of Friends,' ' Associa- 
tions of the Sacred Heart,' or whatsoever bonds good and loving 
men and women have from time to time invented to keep them- 
selves in that sacred unity from which they felt they were falling. 
I can well believe that you feel it difficult to keep in it now. God 
knows that 1 do : but never will I (and I trust you never will) 
yield to that temptation which the Devil put before our Lord, 
' Cast thyself down from hence, for it is written He shall give His 
angels charge over Thee, &c.' Madam, whenever we leave the 
station where God has placed us, be it for never so seemingly self- 
sacrificing and chivalrous and "saintly an end, we are tempting the 
Lord our God, we are yielding most utterly to that very self-will 
which we are pretending to abjure. As long as you have a parent, 
a sister, a servant, to whom you can do good in those simple every- 
day relations and duties of life, which are most divine, because they 
are most human, so long will the entering a cloister be tempting 
the Lord your God. And so long. Madam, will it be the doing all 
in your power to counteract every word which I have ever written. 
My object has been and is, and 1 trust in God ever will be, to 
make people see that they need not, as St. Paul says, go up into 
heaven, or go down to the deep, to find Christ, because He, the 
Word whom we preach, is very near them, in their hearts and on 
their lips, if they would but believe it ; and ready, not to set them 
afloat on new untried oceans of schemes and projects, but ready 
to inspire them to do their duty humbly and simply where He has 
put them — and, believe me, Madam, the only way to regenerate 
the world is to do the duty which lies nearest us, and not to hunt 
after grand, far-fetched ones for ourselves. "If each drop of rain 
chose where it should fall, God's showers would not fall, as they do 
now, on the evil and on the good alike. I know — I know from 
the experience of m)' own heart — how galling this doctrine is — how, 
like Naaman, one goes away in a rage, because the Prophet has 



The Crimean War. 213 

not bid us do some great thing, but only to go and wash in the 
nearest brook, and be clean. But, Madam, be sure that he who is 
not faithful in a little will never be fit to be ruler over much. He 
who cannot rule his own household will never (as St, Paul says) 
rule the Church of God ; and he who cannot keep his temper, or 
be self-sacrificing, cheerful, tender, attentive at home, will never be 
of any real and i)ermanent use to God's poor abroad. 

" VVherefore, Madam, if, as you say, you feel what St. Francis de 
Sales calls ' a dryness of soul ' about good works and charity, con- 
sider well within yourself, whether the simple reason, and (no 
shame on you !) be not only because God does not wish you just 
yet to labor among the poor ; because He has not yet finished 
educating you for that good work, and therefore will not let you 
handle tools before you know how to use them. 

" Begin with small things, Madam — you cannot enter the pres- 
ence of another human being without finding there more to do than 
you or I, or any soul, will ever learn to do perfectly before we die. 
Let us be content to do little, if God sets us at little tasks. It is 
but pride and self-will which says, ' Give me something huge to 
fight, — and I should enjoy that — but why make me sweep the 
dust ? ' Finally, Madam, be sure 0/ one thing, that the Lord Jesus 
Christ is King of this earth, and all therein ; and that if you will 
do faithfully what He has set you to already, and thereby using the 
order of a Deaconess well, gain to yourself a good foundation in 
your soul's training. He will give you more to do in His good time, 
and of His good kind. 

" If you are inclined to answer this letter, let me ask you not to 
answer it for at least three months to come. It may be good for 
you to have read it over a second time. 

" I am, Madam, 

" Your obedient servant, 

" C. KiNGSLEY." 

TO T. HUGHES, ESQ. 

BiDEFORD, December i8, 1854. 

" . . . . As to the War, I am getting more of a Govern- 
ment man every day. I don't see how they could have done better 
in any n)atter, because I don't see but that /should have done a 
thousand times worse in their place, and that is the only fair 
standard. 

" As for a ballad — oh ! my dear lad, there is no use fiddling 
while Rome is burning. I have nothing to sing about those glorious 
fellows, except ' God save the Queen and them.' I tell you the 
whole thing stuns me, so I cannot sit down to make fiddle rhyme 
with diddle about it — or blundered with hundred, like Alfred Tenny- 
son. He is no TyrtJeus, though he has a glimpse of what Tyrta^us 



214 Charles Kingsley. 

ought to be. But I have not even that ; and am going rabbit- 
shooting to-morrow instead. But every man has his caUing, and 
my novel is mine, because I am fit for nothing better. The book 
(' Westward Ho ! ') will be out the middle or end of January, if the 
printers choose. It is a sanguinary book, but perhaps containing 
doctrine profitable for these times. My only pain is that I have 
been forced to sketch poor Paddy as a very worthless fellow then, 
while just now he is turning out a hero. 

" I have made the deliberate amende honorable in a note. 

" I suppose " (referring to some criticism of Mr. H.'s on ' West- 
ward Ho !') "you are right as to Amyas and his mother ; I will 
see to it. The letter in Purchas is to me unknown, but your con- 
ception agrees with a picture my father says he has seen of Cap- 
tain John (he thinks at Lord Anglesey's, at Beaudesert), as a prim, 
hard, terrier-faced little fellow with a sharp chin, and a dogged 
Puritan eye. So perhaps I am wrong : but I don't think that very 
important, for there must have been sea-dogs of my stamp in plenty 
too. 

" Tummas ! Have you read the story of Abou Zennab, his horse, 
in Stanley's ' Sinai,' p. 67? What a myth! What a poem old 
Wordsworth would have writ thereon ! If I didn't cry like a baby 
over it. What a brick of a horse he must have been, and what a 
brick of an old head-splitter Abou Zennab must have been, to have 
his commandments keeped unto this day concerning of his horse ; 
and no one to know who he was, nor when, nor how, nor nothing. 
I wonder if anybody '11 keep our commandments after we be gone, 
much less say, ' Eat, eat, oh horse of Abou Kingsley ! ' " 



CHAPTER XIV. 

1855- 
Aged ;^6. 

Bideford — Crimean War — Death of his friend Charles Blachford Mansfield — 
" Westward Ho " — Letters from Mr. Henry Drummond and Rajah Brooke — 
Drawing Class for Mechanics at Bideford — Leaves Devonshire — Lectures 
to Ladies in London — Correspondence — Winter at Farley Court — The 
" Heroes " Written. 

The Crimean winter, bitter alike to the brave men before Sebas- 
topol and to the hearts of all Englishmen and women at home, 
weighed heavily on Charles Kingsley, to whom the War was like a 
dreadful nightmare, which haunted him day and night. " I can 
think of nothing but the war," he said, and on the receipt of a 
letter from a friend which told him of the numbers of tracts sent out 
to the soldiers which they never read and looked upon as so much 
waste paper, and urging him to write something which would touch 
them, he sat down, wrote off, and despatched the same day to 
London a tract which is probably known to few in England — 
"Brave Words to Brave Soldiers." Several thousand copies were 
sent out and distributed in the Crimea, and the stirring words 
touched many a noble soul. Jt was published anonymously to 
avoid the prejudice which was attached to the name of its author 
in all sections of the religious world and press at that period. 
To his friend Mr. Tom Hughes he writes at this moment : 

" You may have fancied me a bit of a renegade and a hanger- 
back of late. 

" ' Still in our ashes live their wonted fires.' 

And if I have held back from the Socialist Movement, it has been 
because I have seen that the world was not going to be set right in 
any such rose-pink way, excellent as it is, and that there are heavy 
arrears of destructio?i to be made up, before cofistruciiofi can even 
begin ; and I wanted to see what those arrears were. And I do 
see a little. At least I see that the old phoenix must burn, before 
the new one can rise out of its ashes. 



2i6 Charles Kingsley. 

" Next, as to our army. I quite agree with you about that — if 
it existed to agree about. But the remnant that comes home, like 
gold tried in the fire, may be the seed of such an army as the world 
never saw. Perhaps we may help it to germinate. But please 
don't compare the dear fellows to Cromwell's Ironsides. There is 
a great deal of ' personal ' religion in the army, no doubt : and 
personal religion may help men to endure, and complete the bull- 
dog form of courage : but the soldier wants more. He wants a 
faith that he is fighting on God's side; he wants mihtary and cor- 
porate and national religion, and that is what I fear he has yet to 
get, and what I tried to give in my tract. That is what Cromwell's 
Ironsides had, and by it they conquered. This is what the Eliza- 
bethans had up to the Armada, and by it they conquered." 

To Miss Marsh he writes on the death of Captain Hedley Vicars, 
93rd Regiment, who was shot in a sortie, March 23, 1855 : 

North Down House, Bideford, May 9, 1855. 

" . , . . These things are most bitter, and the only comfort 
which I can see in them is, that they are bringing us all face to face 
with the realities of human life, as it has been in all ages, and giving 
us sterner and yet more loving, more human, and more divine 
thoughts about ourselves, and our business here, and the fate of those 
who are gone, and awakening us out of the luxurious, frivolous, un- 
real dream (full nevertheless of harsh judgments, and dealings forth 
of damnation), in which we have been living so long — to trust in a 
Living Father who is really and practically governing this world 
and all worlds, and who willeth that none should perish — and 
therefore has not forgotten, or suddenly begun to hate or torment, 
one single poor soul which is past out of this life into some other, 
on that accursed Crimean soil. All are in our Father's hands ; and 
as David says, Though they go down into hell. He is there. Oh ! 
blessed thought — more blessed to me at this moment (who think 
more of the. many than of the few) than the other thought, that 
though they ascend into heaven with your poor lost hero, He is there 
also. . . . ." 

During the winter, on the 25th of February, a sorrow came, and 
God took from him, for a time, one who had been his beloved 
friend for seventeen years, the ever welcomed guest in his home 
since his marriage, and dear to his wife and children as to himself. 
His own words, partly from a slight prefatory sketch,* partly 

*•' Brazil, Buenos Ayres, and Paraguay," by Charles B. Mansfield, Esq., 
with a Sketch of the Author's Life, by Rev. Charles Kingsley. (Macmillan, 
1856.) 



Charles Mansjleld. 217 

from some notes found among his private papers, will best describe 
Charles Blachford Mansfield ; and to those who love to dwell on 
fair pictm-es of God's works, this picture of a human being, moulded 
into His image, may be acceptable and inspiring. Any record of 
Charles Kingsley would be incomplete unless it included a glimpse 
of one who was so entwined with his Cambridge days, with the 
rectory life at Eversley, with the winter in Devonshire, and at times 
when the presence of any other third person would have been an 
interruption. 

*' I knew Charles Mansfield first when he was at Clare Hall in 
1838-9, sometime in my freshman's winter. He was born in the 
year 18 19, at a Hampshire parsonage, and in due time went to 
school at Winchester, in the old days of that iron rule among mas- 
ters, and that brutal tyranny among the boys themselves, which are 
now fast disappearing before the example of influence of the great 
Arnold. Crushed at the outset, he gave little evidence of talent 
beyond his extraordinary fondness for mechanical science. But 
the regime of Winchester told on his mind in after life for good and 
for evil ; first, by arousing in him a stern horror of injustice (and in 
that alone he was stern), which showed itself when he rose to the 
higher forms, by making him the loving friend and protector of all 
the lesser boys ; and next, by arousing in him a doubt of all prece- 
dents, a chafing against all constituted authority, of which he was 
not cured till after long and sad experience. What first drew me 
to him was the combination of body and mind. He was so won- 
derfully graceful, active, and daring. He was more like an ante- 
lope than a man. H« had a gymnastic ])ole in his room on which 
he used to do strange feats. There was a seal-skin, too, hanging 
in his room, a mottled two-year-old skin, about five feet long, of a 
seal which was shot by him down on the Cornish coast. The seal 
came up to the boat side and stared at him, and he knocked 
it over. That thing haunted him much in after life. He deplored 
it as all but a sin, after he had adopted thi notion that it was 
wrong to take away animal life, for which he used to scold me in 
his sweet charitable way, for my fishing and entomologizing. He 
has often told me that the ghost of the seal appeared to him in his 
dreams, and stood by his bed, bleeding, and making him wretched. 

"He was a good shot, and captain of his boat at Cambridge, I 
think. His powers of leaping standing, exceeded almost any 
man's J ever saw. 1 believe him to have been i:)hysically incapable 
of fear. And since his opinions changed, and during the last war, 
he has said to me that he wished he was at Sebastopol, handling a 
rifle, I have been tempted to wish that he had been a soldier, 
so splendid a one do 1 think he would have made. 



2i8 Charles Kingsley. 

"The next thing which drew me to him was his intellect, not 
merely that he talked of the highest things, but he did it in such a 
wonderful way. He cared for nothing but truth. He would argue 
by the hour, but never for arguing sake. None can forget the 
brilliance of his conversation, the eloquence with which he could 
assert, the fancy with which he could illustrate, the earnestness 
with which he could enforce, the sweetness with which he could 
differ, the generosity with which he could yield. Perhaps the 
secret of that fascination, which even at Cambridge, and still 
more in after life, he quite unconsciously exercised over all who 
really knew him (and often, too, over those who but saw him for a 
passing minute, or heard him in a passing sentence, yet went away 
sa)'ing that they had never met his like), was that virtue of earnest- 
ness. When I first met him at Cambridge he was very full of 
Combe's works, and of 'Volney's Ruins of Empires.' He was 
what would be called a materialist, and used to argue stoutly on it 
with me, who chose to be something of a dualist or gnostic. I 
forget my particular form of folly. But I felt all through that his 
materialism was more spiritual than other men's spiritualism, be- 
cause he had such an intense sense of the truly spiritual ; of right 
and wrong. He was just waiting for the kingdom of God. 
When the truth was shown to him, he leapt up and embraced it. 
There was the most intense faith in him from the first that Right 
was right, and wrong wrong ; that Right must conquer ; that there 
was a kingdom of God Eternal in the heavens, an ideal righteous 
polity, to which the world ought to be, and some day would be, 
conformed. That was his central idea; I don't say he saw it 
clearly from the first ; 1 don't say that he did not lose sight of it at 
times, but I know that he saw it, for he was the first human being 
that taught it to me. Added to this unconquerable faith in good, 
was an unconquerable faith in truth. He first taught me not to 
be afraid of truth. 'If a thing is so, you can't be the worse for 
knowing it is so,' was his motto, and well he carried it out. This 
was connected, it seems to me, with his intense conscientiousness. 
Of course that faculty can be diseased, like any other, and men 
may conscientiously do wrong. But what corrected it in him 
in after life, and prevented it from becoming mere obstinacy 
and fanaticism, was his wonderful humility. That grew on him 
after his conversion. He had it not at starting. At first he was 
charming, but wilful and proud. Afterwards he was just as 
charming, but too apt to say to any and to every one, ' Here 
am I, send me ! ' But of his conscientiousness I could write 
Images. I will not here though, perhaps never — such fantastic 
forms did it take. All knight-errant honor which I ever heard of, 
that man might have, perhaps has, actually outdone. From the 
time of his leaving Cambridge he devoted himself to those sciences 
which had been all along his darling pursuits. Ornithology, geolo- 



Charles Mansfield. 219 

gy, mesmerism, even old magic, were his pastimes ; chemistry and 
dynamics his real work. He was a great ornithologist from child- 
hood ; he knew eggs especially well : one of his plans, because he 
did not like shooting the birds, was to observe them on the trees 
with a telescope ; and though not ' musical ' in the common sense, 
he knew the note of every English bird. I never knew him 
wrong. The history of his next ten years is fantastic enough, 
were it written, to form material for any romance. Long periods 
of voluntary penury, when (though a man of fair worldly fortune) 
he would subsist on the scantiest fare — a few dates and some 
brown bread, or a few lentils — at the cost of a few pence a day, 
bestowing his savings on the poor ; bitter private sorrows, which 
were schooling his heart and temper into a tone more purely an- 
gelic than I have ever seen in man ; magnificent projects, worked 
out as far as they would go, not wildly and superficially, but on the 
most deliberate and accurate grounds of science, then thrown 
away in disappointment, for some fresh noble dream ; an intense 
interest in the social and political condition of the poor, which 
sprang up in him, to his great moral benefit, during the last five 
years of his life. Here were the elements of his schooling — as 
hard a one, both voluntary and involuntary, as ever human soul 
went through. In all my life I never heard that man give vent to 
a low or mean word, or evince a low or mean sentiment. Though 
he had never, I suppose, seen much of the 'grand monde,' he was 
the most perfectly, well-bred man at all points I ever saw ; and 
exquisite judges have said the same thing. His secret seemed very 
simple, if one could attain it ; but he attained it by not trying to 
attain it, for it was merely never thinking about himself. He was 
always thinking how to please others in the most trivial matters ; 
and that, not to make them think well of him (which breeds only 
affectation), but just to make them comfortable : and that was 
why he left a trail of light wherever he went. 

" It was wonderful, utterly wonderful to me in after life, know- 
ing all that lay on his heart, to see the way he flashed down over 
the glebe at Eversley, with his knapsack at his back, like a shining 
star appearing with peace on earth and good-will to men^ and 
bringing an involuntary smile into the faces of every one who met 
him — the compelled reflection of his own smile. And his voice 
was like the singing of a bird in its wonderful cheerfulness, and 
tenderness, and gaiety. 

" At last, when he was six and thirty years of age, his victory 
in the battle of life seemed complete. His enormous and increas- 
ing labor seemed rather to have quickened and steadied than tired 
his brain. The clouds which had beset his path had all but cleared, 
and left sunshine and hope for the future. His spirit had become 
purified, not only into doctrinal orthodoxy, but also into a humble, 
generous, and manful piety, such as I cannot hope often to behold 



2 20 Charles Kings ley. 

again. He had gathered round him friends, both men and women, 
who looked on him with a love such as might be inspired by a 
being from a higher world. He was already recognized as one of 
the most promising young chemists in England, for whose future 
renown no hope could be too high-pitched ; and a patent for a 
chemical discovery which he had obtained, seemed, after years of 
delay and disappointment, to promise him what he of all men 
coveted least, renown and wealth. One day he was at work on 
some experiments connected with his patent. By a mistake of 
the lad who assisted him, the apparatus got out of order, the 
naphtha boiled over, and was already on fire. To save the prem- 
ises from the effect of an explosion, Mr. Mansfield caught up the 
still in his arms, an attempted to carry it out \ the door was fast ; 
he tried to hurl it' through the window, but too late. The still 
dropped from his hands, half flayed with Hquid fire. He scrambled 
out, rolled in the snow, and so extinguished the flame. Fearfully 
burnt and bruised, he had yet to walk a mile to reach a cab, and 
was taken to Middlesex Hospital, where, after nine days of agony, 
he died like a Christian man. 

" Oh, fairest of souls ! Happy are those who knew thee 
in this life ! Happier those who will know thee in the life to 
come ! 

''C. K." 

They are together now ! Two true and perfect knights of God, 
perchance on some fresh noble quest ! 

I^ittle has been recovered of the correspondence of this year, 
much of which sprung out of the pubHcation of "Westward Ho ! " 
That book was dedicated to Rajah Brooke and Bishop Selwyn, and 
produced the following letter from Mr. Henry Drummond, and at 
a later period, one from the Rajah himself: 

Albemarle Street, May 13, 1855. 
" Dear Sir, — 

"I have just seen your noble dedication of 'Westward Ho !' 
to Sir J. Brooke, and have taken the Hberty to desire a copy of 
the shameful trial to which he has been subjected to be sent you, 
as I am sure it will gratify you. I heard from him last week : he 
is quite well, and all his work prospering. A remarkable thing is 
about to take place in Sarawak. The people finding themselves 
dealt with in a manner so superior to that in which they are dealt 
with by their own rulers, have considered that the iieligion of their 
present governor must be the true religion, and accordingly are 
about to apply en masse to become members of Brooke's religion. 
In my opinion the only means which should be used towards 



Rajah Brooke and ''Westward Ho!'' 221 

heathen is the manifestation of mercy, justice, and truth. The 
poor bishop's trouble will btrgin after he has got his converts. 
"Begging pardon for this intrusion from a stranger, 

" I am, Sir, 
*' With great admiration of your writings, 
"Your obedient Servant, 

" Henry Drummond." 



RAJAH SIR JAMES BROOKE TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 

Dawlish, March 24, 1859. 
" My Dear Sir, — 

" I have long delayed to thank you in person for a very wel- 
come dedication to ' Westward Ho ! ' but business, with many cares, 
prevented me. 

"I cannot, however, now that I hear of your kind interest in my 
cause, and the exertions you are making to advance it, forbear 
from assuring you of my sense of your good opinion, and the good 
it does me mentally. My life is pretty well at its dregs, and I shall 
be glad indeed to pass the few remaining months or years in quiet, 
and free from the anxieties which must beset the post 1 have occu- 
pied, but which of late years have been increased tenfold, owing to 
the course or rather no course pursued by the Government. 

" It is a sad but true experience, that everything has succeeded 
with the natives, and everything has failed with the English in Bor- 
neo. I am anxious to retire, for Sarawak should not be ruled by 
a failing man, and I would not cling to power when unable to dis- 
charge its duties. 

" In due time I would fain hand over my staff to my successor if 
permitted ; but if forced to return to Sarawak, to bear its anxieties 
and share its trials, I shall know it is a duty though a trying one, and 
shall not begrudge the exertion for the short time I can make it. 

" Let me thank you, then, for your kindness, and let me have 
the satisfaction of knowing you before I leave this country. 

" Whenever I go again to town, I will let you hear from me, in. 
the hope you will invite me to visit you. 

"Believe me, my dear Sir, 

" Yours very sincerely, 

"J. Brooke." 

Having no parish work at Bideford, except during an outburst 
of cholera, when he took a district for house to house visitation, 
and occasional duty at Northam, Hartland, and Abbotsham, he 
lectured on the Fine Arts, and got up a drawing-class for young 
men, of which one of the members, Mr. Plucknett, (now head of 
a great firm for the design and manufacture of art furniture and 



222 Charles Kings ley. 

decoration in Warwick and Leamington,) feelingly speaks in a let- 
ter to Mrs. Kingsley : 

Warwick, Aj>ril, 1876. 

" I was a youth in Bideford at the time Mr, Kingsley came to 
reside there, when seeing the young men of the town hanging 
about wasting their leisure hours in worse than wasting, his heart 
yearned to do them good. He at first endeavored to establish a 
Government Scliool of Art — this, however, failed. He then offered 
to teach a class drawing — gratuitously. A few of us held a meet- 
ing and hired a room in the house of the Poet Postman, Edward 
Capern, who, although a married man, much older than the rest of 
us, was a most hard-working pupil. I look back upon those even- 
ings at Bideford as the pleasantest part of my life, and, with God's 
blessing, I attribute my success iu life to the valuable instruction 1 
received from Mr. Kingsley : his patience, perseverance, and kind- 
ness won all our hearts, and not one of his class but would have 
given his life for the master. He used, as no doubt you remem- 
ber, to bring fresh flowers from his conservatory for us to copy as 
we became sufficiently advanced to do so ; and still further on he 
gave us lectures on anatomy, illustrating the subject with chalk 
drawings on a large black board. His knowledge of geometry, 
perspective, and free-hand drawing, was wonderful; and the rapid 
and beautiful manner in which he drew excited both our admiration 
and our ambition. I have reason to believe that most of the class 
received lasting benefit, and have turned out well. Personally, I 
may say, with truth, 1 have cause to bless the name of Mr. Kings- 
ley as long as I live ; for I left home with little more than the 
knowledge of my business, and the knowledge of drawing learned 
in the class. After many years of hard work I am now at the head 
of a good business, which I am proud to say is well known for the 
production of art furniture, &c. I often thought of writing to Mr, 
Kingsley, but diffidence prevented me. The last time I ever saw 
him was in front of Lord Elcho's Cottage, at Wimbledon, at the 
time the Belgians first came to the camp. I was there represent- 
ing my corp from Bath as a marksman, and just as I was about to 
speak to Mr. Kingsley, the Prince of Wales came out on the green 
and entered into conversation with him, and my opportunity was 
lost for ever. 

" Though dead, he yet influences for good thousands of hearts 
and minds ; and he is now reaping the reward of his noble eff"orts 
while on earth to add to the sum of human happiness, and thus 
leave the world better than he found it. I need not speak of the 
time when the class ceased, and Mr. Kingsley invited us to your 
house, to bid us farewell, and of our tribute of love and respect to 
him " 



Facility in Sketching. 223 

This tribute of love was a silver card case, which was very pre- 
cious to him, given at the close of a happy evening, when the 
class came to supper at North Down House. 

The mention of the " black board " will remind many of his 
masterly sketches, in public lectures and at his own school, where 
he liked always to have a black board, with a piece of chalk, to 
illustrate his teachings by figures, which spoke sometimes as elo- 
quently as his words. His sense of form was marvellous, and, when 
in doors, he was never thoroughly at ease without a pen or pencil 
in his hand. In conversation with his children or guests his pencil 
was out in a moment to illustrate every subject, whether it was 
natural history, geological strata, geography, maps, or the races of 
mankind. And even when writing his sermons his mind seemed 
to find relief in sketching on the blotting-paper before him, or on 
the blank spaces in his sermon-book, characteristic heads, and 
types of face, among the different schools of thought, from the 
mediaeval monk to the modern fanatic. At Bristol, when he was 
President of the Educational Section at the Social Science Con- 
gress, as he sat listening to the various speakers, pen in hand, for 
the ostensible purpose of making notes, he covered the paper with 
sketches suggested by the audience before him or by his own im- 
agination ; and when the room was cleared, unknown to him, peo- 
ple would return and beg to carry off every scrap of paper he had 
used, as mementos. 

In the end of May he left Devonshire and went up to London, 
before settling at Eversley. He there gave a lecture to the Work- 
ing Men's College, and one of a series to ladies interested in the 
cause of the laboring classes. The subject he took was. The work 
of ladies in the Country Parish. 

The lecture, valuable in itself, is doubly so, as the result of the 
first eleven years of his labor among the poor, and some extracts 
are given to show the human and humane rules by which he worked 
his parish. 

" I keep to my own key-note," he says — " I say, Visit whom, 
when, and where you will ; but let your visits be those of women to 
womefi. Consider to whom you go — to poor souls whose life, com.- 
pared with yours, is one long malaise of body, and soul, and spirit 
— and do as you would be done by ; instead of reproving and fault- 
finding, encourage. In God's name, encourage. They scramble 



224 Charles Kings ley. 

through life's rocks, bogs, and thorn-brakes, clumsily enough, and 
have many a fall, poor things ! But why, in the name of a God of 
love and justice, is the lady, rolling along the smooth turnpike road 
in her comfortable carriage, to be calling out all day long to the 
poor soul who drags on beside her, over hedge and ditch, moss and 
moor, barefooted and weary hearted, with half a dozen children on 
her back — ' You ought not to have fallen here ; and it was very 
cowardly to lie down there ; and it was your duty as a mother, to 
have helped that child through the puddle ; while as for sleeping 
under that bush, it is most imprudent and inadmissible?' Why 
not encourage her, praise her, cheer her on her weary way by lov- 
ing words, and keep your reproofs for )'ourself — even your advice ; 
for she does get on her way after all, where you could not travel a 
step forward ; and she knows what she is about perhaps better than 
you do, and what she has to endure, and what God thinks of her 
life-journey. The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger 
intermeddleth not with its joy. But do not you be a stranger to 
her. Be a sister to her. I do not ask you to take her up in your 
carriage. You cannot ; perhaps it is good for her that you cannot. 
. . . All I ask is, do to the poor soul as you would have her 
do to you in her place. Do not interrupt and vex her (for she is 
busy enough already) with remedies which she does not understand, 
for troubles which you do not understand. But speak comfortably 
to her, and say, ' I cannot feel with you, but I do feel/(9;' you : I 
should enjoy helping you — but I do not know how — tell me. Tell 
me where the yoke galls ; tell me why that forehead is grown old 
before its time : I may be able to ease the burden, and put fresh 
light into the eyes ; and if not, still tell me, simply because I am a 
woman, and know the relief of pouring out my own soul into loving 
ears, even though in the depths of despair.' Yes, paradoxical as 
it may seem, I am convinced that the only way to help these poor 
women humanly and really, is to begin by confessing to them that 
you do not know how to help them ; to humble yourself to them, 
and to ask their counsel for the good of themselves and of their 
neighbors, instead of coming proudly to them, with nostrums, ready 
compounded, as if a doctor should be so confident in his own know- 
ledge of books and medicine as to give physic before asking the 
patient's symptoms. 

" I entreat you to bear in mind (for without this all visiting of the 
poor will be utterly void and useless) that you must regulate your 
conduct to them and in their houses, even to the most minute par- 
ticulars, by the very same rules which apply to persons of your own 
class. . . . Piety, earnestness, affectionateness, eloquence — 
all may be nullified and stultified by simply keeping a poor woman 
standing in her own cottage while you sit, on entering her house, 
even at her own request, while she is at meals. She may decline 



Lecture to Ladies. 225 

to sit ; she may beg you to come in : all the more reason for re- 
fusing utterly to obey her, because it shows that that very inward 
gulf between you and her still exists in her mind, which it is the 
object of your visit to bridge over. If you know her to be in 
trouble, touch on that trouble as you would with a lady. Woman's 
heart is alike in all ranks, and the deepest sorrow is the one of 
which she speaks the last and least. We should not like any one 
— no, not an angel from heaven, to come into our houses without 
knocking at the door, to say, ' I hear you are very ill off — I will 
lend you a hundred pounds. I think you are very careless of 
money, I will take your accounts into my own hands.' And still 
less again, ' Your son is a very bad, profligate, disgraceful fellow, 
who is not fit to be mentioned ; I intend to take him out of your 
hands and reform him myself.' 

" Neither do the poor like such unceremonious mercy, such un- 
tender tenderness, benevolence at horse-play, mistaking kicks for 
caresses. They do not like it, they will not respond to it, save in 
parishes which have been demoralized by officious and indiscrimi- 
nate benevolence, and where the last remaining virtues of the 
poor, savage self-help and independence, have been exchanged for 
organized begging and hypocrisy. 

4s ^ ^ ^ ^ H< ^ 

*' Approach, then, these poor women as sisters — learn lovingly 
and patiently (aye, and reverently, for there is that in every human 
being which deserves reverence, and must be reverenced if we 
wish to understand it) ; learn, I say, to understand their troubles, 
and by that time they will have learnt to understand your reme- 
dies. For you have remedies. I do not undervalue your position. 
No man on earth is less inclined to undervalue the real power of 
wealth, rank, accomplishments, manners — even physical beauty. 
All are talents from God, and I give God thanks when I see them 
possessed by any human being ; for I know that they too can be 
used in His service, and brought to bear on the true emancipation 
of woman — her emancipation not from man (as some foolish per- 
sons fancy), but from the devil, ' the slanderer and divider,' who 
divides her from man, and makes her live a life-long tragedy, 
which goes on in more cottages than palaces — a vie a part, a vie 
incomprise — a life made up half of ill-usage, half of unnecessary 
self-willed martyrdom, instead of being, as God intended half of 
the human universe, a helpmeet for man, and the one bright spot 
which makes this world endurable. Towards making her that, 
and so realizing the primeval mission by every cottage hearth, 
each of you can do something ; for each of you have some talent, 
power, knowledge, attraction between soul and soul, which the 
cottager's wife has not, and by which you may draw her to you, 
by human bonds and the cords of love ; but she must be drawn by 
them alone, or your work is nothing, and though you give the 
15 



226 Charles Kings ley. 

treasures of Ind, they are valueless equally to her and to Christ ; 
for they are not given in His name, which is that boundless tender- 
ness, consideration, patience, self-sacrifice, by which even the cup 
of cold water is a precious offering — as God grant your labor 
may be ! " 

Again, as to teaching boys, he adds : 

" There is one thing in school work which I wish to press on 
you. And that is, that you should not confine your work to the 
girls ; but bestow it as freely on those who need it more, and who 
(paradoxical as it may be) will respond to it more deeply and 
freely — the boys. I am not going to enter into the reason why. 
I only entreat you to believe me, that by helping to educate the 
boys, or even by taking a class, as I have seen done with admira- 
ble effect, of grown-up lads, you may influence for ever, not only 
the happiness of your pupils, but of the girls whom they will here- 
after marry. It will be a boon to your own sex, as well as to ours, 
to teach them courtesy, self-restraint, reverence for physical weak- 
ness, admiration of tenderness and gentleness, and it is one which 
only a lady can bestow. Only by being accustomed in youth to 
converse with ladies will the boy learn to treat hereafter his sweet- 
heart or his wife like a gentleman. There is a latent chivalry, 
doubt it not, in the heart of every untutored clod ; if it dies out in 
him, as it too often does, it were better for him I often think 
that he had never been born ; but the only talisman which will 
keep it alive, much more develop it into its fulness, is friendly and 
revering intercourse with women of higher rank than himself, 
between whom and him there is a great and yet blessed gulf 

fixed." 

* * * * * * * 

One secret of his own influence was this loving, human teach- 
ing. In writing at this time to an unknown correspondent, who 
consulted him about his ragged-school work, in which he was just 
then greatly discouraged, he says : 

" As for the ragged school, I would say, though they curse, yet 
bless thou — teach there all the more ; tell these lads and men that 
they have a P'ather in heaven — show that you believe it, by your 
looks, your manner, and common geniality, and brotherly kind- 
ness, and general hopefulness of tone ; and let them draw their 
own conclusions. God their Father will take good care that the 
good seed shall grow." 

During a few days' absence he writes to his wife : 



Suffering Working out Perfection. 227 

EVERSLEY, Jzily 16, 1855. 

". . . . After all, the problem of life is not a difficult one, 
for it solves itself so very soon at best — by death. Do what is right 
the best way you can, and wait to the end to k?iow. Only we 
priests confuse it with our formulas, and bind heavy burdens. How 
many have I bound in my time, God forgive me ! But for that, 
too, I shall receive my punishment, which is to me the most com- 
forting of thoughts 

*'Yes— 

' 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
Oh life, not death for which we pant, 
More life, and fuller, that I want.' 

You are right — that longing to get rid of walls and roofs and all the 
chrysalis case of humanity is the earnest of a higher, richer state of 
existence. That instinct which the very child has to get rid of 
clothes, and cuddle to flesh — what is it but the longing for fuller 
union with those it loves ? But see again (I always take the bright 
side), — If in spite of wars and fevers, and accidents, and the strokes 
of chance, this world be as rich and fair and green as we have 
found it, what must the coming world be like ? I,et us comfort 
ourselves as St. Paul did (in infinitely worse times), that the suffer- 
ings of this present time are not worthy to be compared Avith the 
glory that shall be revealed. It is not fair either to St. Paul or to 
God — to quote the one text about the creation groaning and tra- 
vailing, without the other, which says, that it will not groan or tra- 
vail long. Would the mother who has groaned and travailed and 
brought forth children — would she give up those children for the 
sake of not having had the pain ? No. Then believe that the world 
and every human being in it who has really groaned and travailed, 
will not give up its past pangs for the sake of its then present per- 
fection, but will look back on this life, as you do on past pain, with 
glory and joy. Oh ! let the bible tell its own tale, and be faithful 
to its plam words, honestly and carefully, understood, and all will 
be well. I come to-morrow .... and I shall see my dar- 
ling children." 

They now settled at Eversley ; but as winter approached, the 
damp obliged liim, on his wife's account, to leave the rectory again ; 
but not his people, to his and their great joy. He took a house for 
six months on Farley Hill, a high and dry spot in the next parish. 
In the intervals of parochial work and lectures at the various 
diocesan institutes, he brought out a volume of " Sermons for the 
Times," and wrote a book of Greek fairy tales for his children, 



2 28 Charles Kings ley. 

which came out at Christmas, as "The Heroes," dedicated to Rose, 
Maurice, and Mary. 

TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. 

Farley Court, Nov., 1855. 

" , . , . Some of your hints are valuable. I feel what you say 
about not Greek and too Greek ; but Thad laid my account with 
all that before I wrote. If I tell the story myself as you wish, I 
catit give the children the Greek spirit — either morally or in man- 
ner, therefore I have adopted a sort of simple ballad tone, and tried 
to make my prose as metrical as possible. The archaisms are all 
slips in the rough copy, and shall be amended, as shall all recondite 
allusions ; but you must remember as to modernisms, that we 
Cambridge men are taught to translate Greek by its modern equi- 
valent even to slang. As to the word 'thrall,' about which you 
are so wroth, I was not aware that I was wrong. It shall be 
amended with thanks. My own belief is, that by taking the form 
I have, I shall best do what I want, translate the children back into 
a new old world, and make them, as long as they are reading, 
forget the present, which is the true method of a — mtisemeni, while 
tlie half metrical form will fix it in their minds, and give them 
something to think over. I don't agree with you at all, nor does F., 
about omitting allusions which the children can't understand. She 
agrees with me that that is just what they like. 

" Read, Oh read Longfellow's song of ' Hiawatha ' — never mind 
a few defects, old hole-picker ; but read a set of myths as new as 
delightful, and cause Tom Hughes to read them likewise." 

TO THE SAME. 

Farley Court, De€, 30, 1855. 

"And for this fame, &c., 

" I know a little of her worth. 

"And I will tell you what I know. 

" That, in the first place, she is a fact ; and as such, it is not 
wise to ignore her, but at least to walk once round her, and see 
her back as well as her front. 

" The case to me seems to be this. A man feels in himself the 
love of praise. Every man does who is not a brute. It is a 
universal human faculty ; Carlyle nicknames it the sixth sense. 
Who made it ? God or the devil? Is it flesh or spirit? a difficult 
question ; because tamed animals grow to possess it in a high 
degree ; and our metaphysic does not yet allow them spirit. 
But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad ; only bad when misdi- 
rected, and not controlled by reason, the faculty which judges 
between good and evil. Else why has God put His love of praise 



Fame and Praise. 229 

into the heart of every child which is born into the world, and 
entwined it into the holiest, filial, and family affections, as the 
earliest mainspring of good actions ? Has God appointed that 
every child shall be fed first with a necessary lie, and afterwards 
come to the knowledge of your supposed truth, that the praise of 
God alone is to be sought ? Or are we to believe that the child is 
intended to be taught as deficately and gradually as possible the 
painful fact, that the praise of all men is not equally worth hav- 
ing, and to use his critical faculty to discern the praise of good men 
from the praise of bad, to seek the former and despise the latter ? 
I should say that the last was the more reasonable. And this I 
will say, that if you bring up any child to care nothing for the 
praise of its parents, its elders, its pastors, and masters, you may 
make a fanatic of it, or a shameless cynic : but you will neither 
make it a man, an Englishman, nor a Christian. 

"But 'our Lord's words stand, about not seeking the honor 
which comes from men, but the honor which comes from God 
only ! ' True, they do stand, and our Lord's fact stands also, the 
fact that he has created every child to be educated by an honor 
which comes from his parents and elders. Both are true. Here, 
as in most spiritual things, you have an antinomia, an apparent 
contradiction, which nothing but the gospel solves. And it does 
solve it ; and your one-sided view of the text resolves itself into 
just the same fallacy as the old ascetic one. ' We must love God 
alone, therefore we must love no created thing.' To which St. 
John answers pertinently, ' He who loveth not his brother whom 
he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?' 
If you love your brethren, you love Christ in them. If you love 
their praise, you love the praise of Christ in them. For consider 
this, you cannot deny that, if one loves any person, one desires 
that person's esteem. But we are bound to love all men, and that 
is our highest state. Therefore, in our highest state, we shall 
desire all men's esteem. Paradoxical, but true. If we believe in 
Christmas-day ; if we believe in Whitsunday, we shall believe that 
Christ is in all men, that God's spirit is abroad in the earth, and 
therefore the dispraise, misunderstanding, and calumny of men 
will be exquisitely painful to us, and ought to be so ; and, on the 
other hand, the esteem of men, and renown among men for doing 
good deeds will be inexpressibly precious to us. They will be 
signs and warrants to us that God is pleased with us, that we are 
sharing in that 'honor and glory' which Paul promises again and 
again, with no such scruples as yours, to those who lead heroic 
lives. We shall not neglect the voice of God within us ; but we 
shall remember that there is also a voice of God without us, which 
we must- listen to : and that in a Christian land, vox populi^ pa- 
tiently and discriininately listened to, is sure to be found not far off 
from the voii Dei. 



230 Charles Kingsley. 

" Now, let me seriously urge this last fact on you. Of course, in 
listening to the voice of the man outside there is a danger, as there 
is in the use of any faculty. You may employ it, according to 
Divine reason and grace, for ennobling and righteous purposes : or 
you may degrade it to carnal and selfish ones ; so you may degrade 
the love of praise into vanity, into longing for the honor which 
comes from men, by pandering to their passions and opinions, by 
using your powers as they would too often like to use theirs, for 
mere self-aggrandisement, by saying in your heart — quam pulchrum 
digito monstrari et dicier hie est. That is the man who wrote the 
fine poem, who painted the fine picture, and so forth, till, by giv- 
ing way to this, a man may give way to forms of vanity as base 
as the red Indian who sticks a fox's tail on, and dances about 
boasting of his brute cunning. I know all about that, as well as 
any poor son of Adam ever did. But I know, too, that to desire 
the esteem of as many rational men as possible ; in a word, to 
desire an honorable and true renown for having done good in my 
generation, has nothing to do with that ; and the more I fear and 
struggle against the former, the more I see the exceeding beauty 
and divineness, and everlasting glory of the latter as an entrance 
into the communion of saints. 

" Of course, all this depends on whether we do believe that 
Christ is in every man, and that God's spirit is abroad in the earth. 
Of course, again, it will be very difficult to know who speaks by 
God's spirit, and who sees by Christ's light in him ; but surely the 
wiser, the humbler path, is to give men credit for as much wisdom 
and rightness as possible, and to believe that when one is found 
fault with, one is probably in the wrong. For myself, on looking 
back, I see clearly with shame and sorrow, that the obloquy which 
I have brought often on myself and on the good cause, has been 
almost all of it my own fault — that I have given the devil and bad 
men a handle, not by caring what people would say, but by not 
caring — by fancying that I was a very grand fellow, who was going 
to speak what I knew to be true, in spite of all fools (and really 
did and do intend so to do), while all the while I was deceiving 
myself, and unaware of a canker at the heart the very opposite to 
the one against which you warn me — T mean the proud, self-willed, 
self-conceited spirit which made no allowance for other men's 
weakness or ignorance ; nor again, for their superior experience 
and wisdom on points which I had never considered — which took 
a pride in shocking and startling, and defying, and hitting as hard 
as I could, and fancied, blasphemously, as I think, that the word of 
God had come to me only, and went out from me only. God 
forgive me for these sins, as well as for my sins in the opposite 
direction ; but for these sins especially, because I see them to be 
darker and more dangerous than the others. 

" For there has been gradually revealed to me (what my many 



The Voice Within and the Voice Without. 231 

readings in the lives of fanatics and ascetics ought to have taught 
me long before), that there is a terrible gulf ahead of that not 
caring what men say. Of course it is a feeUng on which the spirit 
must fall back in hours of need, and cry, ' Thou God knowest 
mine integrity. I have believed, and therefore I will speak ; Thou 
art true, though all men be liars !' But I am convinced that that is 
a frame in which no man can live, or is meant to live ; that it is 
only to be resorted to in fear and trembling, after deepest self- 
examination, and self-purification, and earnest prayer. For other- 
wise, Ludlow, a man gets to forget that voice of God without him, 
in his determination to listen to nothing but the voice of God 
Avithin him, and so he falls into two dangers. He forgets that there 
is a voice of God without him. He loses trust in, and charity to, 
and reverence for his fellow-men ; he learns to despise, deny, and 
quench the Spirit, and to despise prophesyings, and so becomes 
gradually cynical, sectarian, fanatical. 

" And then comes a second and worse danger. Crushed into 
self, and his own conscience and schema mimdi, he loses the 
opportunity of correcting his impression of the voice of God 
within, by the testimony of the voice of God without ; and so he 
begins to mistake more and more the voice of that very flesh of 
his, which he fancies he has conquered, for the voice of God, and 
to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out of that 
springs electicism, absence of tenderness for men, for want of 
sympathy zuith men ; as he makes his own conscience his standard 
for (xod, so he makes his own character the standard for men ; and 
so he becomes narrow, hard, and if he be a man of strong will and 
feelings, often very inhuman and cruel. This is the history of 
thousands — of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged Quakers, 
Quakers who cursed Puritans ; Nonjurors, who though they would 
die rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, 
would plot with James to murder William, or devastate England 
with Irish Rapparees and Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the 
spiritual diagnosis of those many pious persecutors, who, though 
neither hypocrites or blackguards themselves, have used both as 
instruments of their fanaticism. 

" Against this I have to guard myself, you little know how 
much, and to guard my children still more, brought up, as they 
will be, under a father, who, deeply discontented with the present 
generation, cannot but express that discontent at times. To make 
my children ' banausoi,' insolent and scoffing radicals, beheving in 
nobody and nothing but themselves, would be perfectly easy in me 
if I were to make the watch-word of my house, ' Never mind what 
people say.' On the contrary, I shall teach them that there are 
plenty of good people in the world, that public opinion has pretty 
surely an undercurrent of the water of life, below all its froth and 
garbage, and that in a Christian country like this, where, with all 



232 Charles Kingsley. 

faults, a man (sooner or later) has fair play and a fair hearing, the 
esteem of good men, and the blessings of the poor, will be a pretty 
sure sign that they have the blessing of God also ; and 1 shall tell 
them, when they grow older, that ere they feel called on to become 
martyrs, in defending the light within them against all the world, 
they must first have taken care most patiently, and with all self- 
distrust and humility, to make full use of the light which is 
around them, and has been here for ages before them, and 
would be here still, though they had never been born or thought 
of The antinomy between this and their own conscience may 
be painful enough to them some day. To what thinking man 
is it not a life -long battle ? but I shall not dream that by denying 
one pole of the antinomy I can solve it, or do anything but make 
them, by cynicism or fanaticism, bury their talent in the earth, 
and not do the work which God has given them to do, because 
they will act like a parson who, before beginning his sermon, 
should first kick his congregation out of doors, and turn the key ; 
and not like St. Paul, who became all things to all men, if by any 
means he might save some." 



CHAPTER XV. 

1856. 
Aged 37. 

Winter at Farley Court — Letter from a Sailor at Hong Kong — Union Strikes — 
Fishing Poem and Fishing Flies — The Sabbath Question — Invitation to Snow- 
donia — Visit to North Wales — American Visitors — Preface to Tauler's Ser- 
mons. 

The winter of 1856, spent at Farley Court, a lovely spot in Swal- 
lowfield parish, adjoining to and overlooking Eversley, was a bright 
and happy one. Living on high ground, and in a dry house, acted 
as a tonic to him as well as to his family, and infused fresh life into 
his preaching and his parish work. In his night-schools, which 
were well attended, he gave lectures on mines, shells, and other 
subjects connected with Natural History, illustrated with large 
drawings of his own. The appearance of a ghost in the neighbor- 
hood, which had greatly alarmed his parishioners, but which he 
stalked down and found, as he expected, was a white deer, escaped 
from Calverly Park, led to his preaching a sermon on Ghosts to his 
people. The old incubus of the Crimean War was removed after 
two years pressure, and the new one of the Indian Mutiny, which 
weighed even more heavily upon him from the thought of the suf- 
ferings of women and children, was as yet in the future, and his 
heart rebounded again. The formation of the camp at Aldershot 
created fresh interests for him at this time and during his remaining 
years, by bringing a new element into his congregation at Eversley, 
and giving him the friendship of many Crimean officers. In July 
he was at Aldershot on the memorable occasion of the Queen's 
first inspection of the remnant of her Crimean army, and saw the 
march-past of the different regiments before Her Majesry, who was 
on horseback — a sight never to be forgotten, and which impressed 
him deeply. 

In August the long dreamt of expedition to Snowdon with his 
friends Mr. Tom Hughes and Mr. Tom Taylor, which resulted in 



234 Charles Kingsley. 

the writing of " Two Years Ago," was accomplished. His spare 
hours were devoted to the study and classification of the Phryganae, 
which was carried on more by the side of trout streams in North 
Wales and in an occasional day's fishing at Wotton and Wild Moor, 
than in his own study. He contributed articles to the " North 
British Review" on Art and Puritanism, and to ''Frazer's Maga- 
zine" on Mystics and Mysticism,* and began his new romance. 
During the summer and autumn many a pilgrimage was made by 
Americans to the home of the author whose works were then per ■ 
haps more appreciated at the other side of the Atlantic than in his 
own country. Among these were Mrs. Beecher Stowe and her 
sister, Mrs. Perkins. 

The following letters will show the life and vigor which marked 
his private correspondence this year : 

TO T. HUGHES, ESQ. 

Farley Court. 

*'I wish you would make a vow, and keep it strong ; for F. says, 
that if you will, I may : and that is not to ' cross the sea like Sophia,' 
but to go with me to Snowdon next summer for a parson's week, 
i.e. twelve days. For why? I have long promised my children a 
book to be called ' Letters from Snowdon,' and I want to rub up 
old memories, and to get new ones in parts which I have not seen. 
You do not know how easy it is. You get second class into the 
mail at Euston Square at 9 p.m., and breakfast at Aber, under the 
Carnadds, next morning. An ordnance map, a compass, fishing- 
tackle, socks, and slippers are all you want. Moreover, I do know 
where to fish, and one of the crackest fishers of the part has pro- 
mised to give me as many flies of his own making as I like, while 
another can lend us boat or eoracle, if we went to fish Gwjmnant 
Dinas. I conceive that, humanly speaking, if we went to work 
judgmatically, we could live for \2s. a-day each at the outside (if 
we are canny, at less), kill an amount of fish perfectly frightful, and 
all the big ones, by the simple expedient of sleeping by day, walking- 
evening and morning, and fishing during the short hot nights, Wales 
is a cheap place, if you avoid show inns ; and, save a night at Capel 
Curig, we need never enter a show inn. We may stay two or three 

days at Pen-y-Gwyrrryynnwwdddelld there — I can't spell it, but 

it sounds Pennygoorood, which is the divinest pig-sty beneath the 
canopy, and at Bedgelert old Jones the clerk, and king of fisher- 
men, will take us in — and do for us — if we Jet him. The parson 

* Since published in the Miscellanies, 



Body and Soul. 235 

of Bedgelert is a friend of mine also, but we must depend on our 
own legs, and on stomachs, which can face braxy mutton, young 
taters, Welsh poiter, which is the identical drainings of Noah's 
flood turned sour, and brandy of more strength than legality. 
Bread horrid. Fleas MCCCC ad infinitum. Bugs a sprinkUng. 
For baths, the mountain brook ; for towel, a wisp of any endogen 
save Scirpus triqueter, or Juncus squarrosus ; and for cure of all 
ills, and supplement of all defects, baccy. Do come — you have no 
notion of the grandeur of the scenery, small as it is compared with 
the Alps." 

TO , ESQ. 

February 27, 1856. 

" Your letter delighted me . . . . * * * gave me your mes- 
sage. My answer is, I am going to preach on ' Saved by Hope' 
to my people, on Sunday, and also when I preach for my father at 
Chelsea on (D. V.) April 27, for the District Visiting Society .... 
With regard to * * * I fear neither you nor any man can give him 
a fresh back to his head : enlarge that deficient driving wheel in the 
cerebellum, so as to keep the thinking and feeling part of the brain 
at work. It is sad to see how much faults of character seeni to de- 
pend on physiognomic defects ; but do they really depend upon it ? 
Is a man's spirit weak because he has a poor jaw, and a small back 
to his head ; or is his jaw poor, and his cerebellum small, because 
his spirit is weak ? I would fain believe the latter ; fain believe 
that the body is the exjiression of the soul, and is moulded by it, 
and not, as Combe would have it, the soul by the body : my reason 
points to that belief ; but I shrink from my own reason, because it 
seems to throw such tremendous moral i;esponsibility on man, to 
forbid one's saying ' poor fellow, it is not his fault, it is a constitu- 
tional defect ; ' for if one says that a man is not responsible for the 
form of his own soul — where does all virtue and vice go to ? And 
this brings one straight to the question of madness, on which I fully 
agree with you. I said so in print, long ago, in a sermon on Ahab 
at Ramoth Gilead, which you will find in my first set of National 
Sermons. And I have seen cases myself which I could attribute 
to nothing else. I cannot but believe that a pecuhar kind of 
epilepsy of which I have had two cases among the poor of my 
parish, and some of the horrible phenomena of puerperal mania, 
are ' the unclean spirit ' of the New Testament. I am perfectly 
certain that the accesses of mingled pride, rage, suspicion, and 
hatred of everybody and everything, accompanied by tlie most un- 
speakable sense of loneliness and '•darkness' (St. John's metaphor, 
for it is tlie only one), which were common to me in youth, and 
are now, by God's grace, very rare (though I am just as capable of 
them as ever, when I am at unaivares and give place to the devil 



236 Charles Kingsley. 

by harsh judgments or bitter words) were and are nothing less than 
temporary possession by a devil. I am sure that the way in which 
those fits pass off in a few minutes, as soon as I get ashamed of 
myself, is not to be explained by ' habit,^ either physical or moral 
(though '■moral habits' I don't believe in), but by the actual in- 
tervention of an unseen personage, I believe our Lord Jesus Christ 
Himself, driving away that devil. I had once a temporary madman 
here among our cottagers, who in his first fit tore off his clothes 
and ran away into the woods naked. (I suspect that desire of 
nakedness to be the blind effort to be merely himself, and to escape 
from the sense of oppression caused by something, or being over 
and above self, i.e.^ fi'om possession). In that fit I did not see him, 
it was before I came here. In his second he turned melancholy 
mad, walked up and down in silence, and when he spoke, declared 
that the devil had hold of him, and would not let him sleep. The 
Doctor luckily believed in demoniacal possession, and came to me, 
saying, ' I can't cure this man's mind by making his liver act. 
You must make his liver act by curing his mind.' I went to the 
patient and agreed with him fully, that the devil was in him ; and 
I said, ' I will tell you why he is in you ; because, my dear man, 
you have been a thief, and a cheat, and a liar ' {as all the world 
knew), ' and have sold yourself to the father of lies. But if you 
will pray to God to forgive you (and then I set forth those precious 
promises in Christ, which the Record thinks I don't believe), ' and 
will lead a new and honest life, you may snap your fingers at the 
devil.' And after awhile the man got well, and has had no return 
for seven years. I did that in the face of the troublesome fact, 
that his son (and a great rogue too) was subject to melancholy 
madness also, and that his sister was evidently cracked — her mad- 
ness being causeless jealousy. That looked like a 'constitutional' 
defect in the family blood ; but I thought the man must know his 
own business best, and took him at his word, and on the same plan 
I had very fair success with his son also. But enough — only pray 
write to me again on this matter that we may compare notes. I 
cannot tell you the relief to me to find a man like minded ; and 
therefore write, when you have a spare five minutes, on any matter. 
You are one by whose confidence I feel honored, and I do not use 
that word lightly. 

'" There is much more in your letter I must answer another day." 

TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 

Farley Court, March, 1856. 

" .... I enjoy your sermons weekly very much, and a 
good deal which you say in them, hits me very hard. What glib 
cruelty and nonsense I have talked in past times ! If I wanted a 
proof of the ' corruption of human nature,' I could find no plainer 



Calvinism. 237 

one than the way in which really amiable and thoughtful people 
take up with doctrines which outrage their own reason and morality, 
simply because they find them ready-made to their hands ; and 
now it seems as if the second-hand creed was actually conquering. 
I go into no middle-class house, religious or irreligious, without 
finding their whole religious library composed of the very school 

which we are fighting against — Adam Clarke, C , S , etc. 

And what hope would one have, if one did not know that under- 
neath all this lay the strangest unrest in, and dissatisfaction with, 
and disbelief in it all. I wish I could have some talk with you ; 
for unless I can get from you some of your moderate and charitable 
and two-sided notions, I shall begin to regard Calvin as a child of 
the Devil, and Calvinism as the upas tree, which Satan planted in 
the Lord's garden at the Reformation to poison all with its shade. 
The influence of Calvinism abroad seems to me to have been uni- 
formly ruinous, destructive equally of political and moral life, a 
blot and a scandal on the Reformation ; and now that it has at last 
got the upper hand in England, can we say much more for it ? 



TO JOHN BULLAE, ESQ. 

1856. 

" . . . . Since I saw you I have felt a great deal. A dear 
friend has suddenly lost a wife, who also was very dear to us. I was 
on the spot and saw all ; and it was very dreadful, in spite of all the 
perfect hope behind. God help us, what cobwebs we all are ; 
why should He not sweep us away, as He does better than us ? 
It is a very searching thought. . . . How such moments as 
these draw men near each other ! Mrs. Kingsley last night just 
escaped a horrible accident, from the fall of a horse. I felt her 
danger draw me nearer to every one whom I esteemed, by shock- 
ing me with the fearful possibility of loneliness — though only for a 
time at worst — still loneliness, and very dreadful." 

Among the letters of this year, he was deeply touched by the 
following from a naval officer_, dated H.M.S. "St. George," off 
Hong Kong : 

" Among the many blessings for which I have had to thank God 
this night, the most special has been for the impressions produced 
by your noble sermon of ' Westward Ho ! ' Some months ago I 
read it for the first time, then sailed on a long cruize, and now on 
returning have read it again with prayer that has been answered, 
for God's blessing has gone with it. I feel as I never felt before, 
that Protestantism is the religion of this Ufe especially, and that I 
have been heeding the future to the neglect of the living present. 
Many a day of late, thinking of you, I have gone on deck to my 



238 Charles Kingsley. 

duty and seen God, where theoretically only I have been in the 
habit of looking for Him, on the sea, and in the clouds, and faces 
of men ; and the Holy Spirit descending, has stirred my pulses 
with the sense of universal love prevailing, above, around, and 
beneath. 

" ' O Uncreate, unseen, and undefined, source of all light, and 
fountain of ail mind, lurks there in all the wide expanse, one spot 
— above, around, beneath, where Thou art not ? ' I am able to 
speak of God and of religion with less of the humiliating hesita- 
tion that I am accustomed to, and trust that He will give rae that 
manliness that will enable me so to talk of His workings, which, 
alas ! we are in the habit of practically ignoring. Accept then, ni)'- 
dear sir, this tribute to your own manly, plain, and practical preach- 
ing. Doubtlessly it has found an echo far and wide ; to ' roll from 
Boul to soul, and grow for ever, and for ever ! ' 

" May God raise up for us many such teachers, and long preserve 
you in all your faculties of heart and head, to testify of Him, and 
prepare the world for the coming of Christ. 

" Sir Michael Seymour has morning prayers, daily, in his own 
ship — an almost solitary instance in the navy ; but as the admiral 
sets the example, may we not hope that the good old habit of those 
days when ' first, above all things,' it was provided ' that God be 
duly served twice every day,' is returning ? 

• Once the welcome light has broken, 
Who shall say 
What the unimagined glories 

Of the day, 
What the evil that shall perish 

In its ray ? 
jVid the dawning tongue and pen, 
Aid it hopes of honest men ; 
Aid it paper — -aid it type — 
Aid it for the hour is ripe ; 
And our earnest must not slacken 

Into play, 
Men of thought and men of action 
Clear the way ! ' 

" Ever, I pray so to continue, I remain, my dear sir, 

" Your grateful brother in the faith, 

" R. N." 

" P. S. — As a nautical man I must take the liberty of pointing 
out one little nautical error, and only one. You describe the 
cable of the ' Rose ' as rattling through the hawse-hole, forgetting 



A Sailor s Testimony. 239 

that then (and for 230 years afterwards) hemp cables alone were 
used, in which there is little rattle, as any one who has been com- 
pelled to work them will testify. Yet, on second thought, you are 
not far out, for before letting go hemp cables you get a range up 
before the bilts, which portion runs out rapidly enough ; but it is 
not done now with chain. You would have made a first-rate 
sailor, sir ! " 

This was one among the many letters which he received about 
his novel of " Westward Ho ! " The writer some years afterwards 
made himself known to him as Captain Alston, of H.M.S. "St. 
George," and a strong personal attachment was formed between 
the two men who had so much in common ; and up to Captain 
Alston's lamented death, which occurred a short time before that of 
his friend, he consulted Mr. Kingsley on all points connected with 
his noble work, which was latterly on board the Reformatory Train- 
ing Ships on the Thames and the Clyde. After his first visit to 
Eversley, Captain Alston writes : 

" It Goes not pay, my dear Mr. Kingsley, to stay with you. I 
don't know when I felt so miserable as I did yesterday. Positively 
I thought incipient heart-breaking had commenced ; it felt very like 
it — chokiness and all that, in the train going up. I thought I should 
shake it off after dinner, but could not. My pipe made me worse, 
for it reminded me only of your snuggery, your arm-chair, your 
talk, and your kindness. The more I feel kindness the more 
incapable I am of thanking people for it to their face. In the 
land of the hereafter we shall know each other. Then soul will 
come to soul, and you will know how much 1 care for you ; the red 
Indian spirit won't let him write the proper word (or perhaps it is 
from those old hard hearts, the sons of Odin, one inherits this re- 
serve), and I will put it down to race, and bide that time, and say 
no more about it. 

" Salute all in the two houses for me, and old S., and take a 
Dieu vous garde from 

" A. H. Alston." ' 

To a friend at; Sheffield, he wrote on the subject of Trades 
Unions : 

" If these trade unions are to be allowed to exist, they can only 
exist on the ground of being not only organs for combination, but 
for keeping the combination men within the law. If they will not 
disprove that such outrages have been committed by union men ; 



240 Charles Kingsley. 

if they will not, in honor to their own class, be the first to drag 
such hounds to justice ; if they will do nothing to free themselves 
from the old stigma that from 1820-48, they have themselves 
notoriously engaged in such outrages and murders — then let them 
be put down by law as inca])able morally as politico-economically. 
With you I have defended the right of combination among the 
workmen, in hope that they would become wiser than of yore. 
But if they continue* to murder, I see nothing for them but the just 
judgment of public opinion which will sweep them away, and I fear 
inaugurate a reign of tyranny and of capital. I and others have 
been seeing with dread the growing inclination of the governing 
classes to put down these trades unions, &c., by strong measures. 
What am I to say when I see the working men themselves, in the 
face of this danger, justifying the measures of those who wish to be 
hard on them ? I have seen enough of trade unions to suspect 
that the biggest rogues and the loudest charlatans are the men 
who lead or mislead t'le honest working men ; but if the honest 
working men tl:^emselves make no move towards detecting and 
exposing the authors of such outrages, they must suffer with their 
blind and base leaders. If they fancy they are too sti'ong for the 
classes above them, that they can defy the laws of England and the 
instincts of humanity, then they will find themselves mistaken, 
even if they have to be taught their folly by a second Bristol riots 
or a second Peterloo." 

In March, 1856, among many other letters about his books 
came one from a perfect stranger, as he called himself, dated from 
Cambridge, saying, he felt compelled after reading the "Sermons 
for the Times," to express his own deep debt of gratitude : 

" I immediately took them to a friend, whose remorse for a past 
course of sin has often led him to the very verge of suicide, and he 
has just been to me with a heart full of grateful delight, and told 
me that the sermon on ' Salvation ' has made him a completely new 
creature. I have ventured to trespass on your time, because I 
cannot help thinking that a minister of God must have sore trials 
to bear, and bitter disappointments, and the experience that he has 
planted, not altogether in vain, the good seed, cannot but be con- 
soling." 

In writing to another stranger who had made full confession of 
his doubts and difficulties to him, Mr. Kingsley says : 

" Your experiences interested me deeply, and confirm my own. 
An atheist I never was ; but in ni}' early life I wandered through 
many doubts and vain attempts to explain to myself the riddle of 



Off for Rest. 241 

life and this world, till I found that no explanation was so complete 
as the one which one learnt at one's mother's knee. Complete 
nothing can be on this side of the grave, on which St. Paul himself 
said, that he only saw through a glass darkly ; but complete enough 
to give comfort to the weary hearts of my poor laboring folk, and 

to mine also, which is weary enough at times I am 

much pleased to hear what you say about your mother. Believe 
me, the good old-fashioned Church-folk, when they were good, were 
nearer the truth than either Exeter-Halhte or Puseyite " 

With spring his thoughts turned to fishing ; and one April morn- 
ing when the south-westerly wind wafted certain well-known sounds 
from the Camp, the South-Western Railway, and Heckfield Place, 
to the little Rectory, these lines were written and put into his 
wife's hand : 

Oh blessed drums of Aldershot ! 

Oh blessed south-west train ! 
Oh blessed, blessed Speaker' s clock, 

All prophesying rain ! 

Oh blessed yaffil, laughing loud ! 

Oh blessed falling glass ! 
Oh blessed fan of cold grey cloud ! 

Oh blessed smelling grass ! 

Oh bless'd southwind that toots his horn 

Through every hole and crack ! 
I'm off at eight to-morrow morn, 

To bring such fishes back ! 

April I, 1856. 

to tom hughes, esq. 

Farley Court. 

"When can you come and see us ? We return to Eversley on 
Easter Monday ; all that week swallowed up in confirmations, 
leastwise till Thursday ; and just coming home is a confused time ; 
but if you can't come any other time you must e'en come then ; 
for come you must. This ' gracious rain ' will put the fish all right 
in a week, and we might run to Farnham or elsewhere, for a day 
(more I can't spare), to see what a large march-brown, and a red or 
a golden palmer would do. I have great hopes of fishing this spring, 
and am organizing a series of ' leaves ' from everybody round. 
I think I can get eight or nine leaves for day's fishing, and eight or 
nine days is more than I can take, for half of them are sure to be 
16 



242 Charles Kiitgsley. 

bright, or calm, or morning frosts, or something catawompous and 
miiltificative. How do you stand towards ' Rev. Popham ' (as the 
tradesmen would call him) ? I have the promise of fishing, and a 
bed with ' Rev. John,' and would ask for the fishing if you would 
come too. But it wouldn't be worth while if we couldn't also do 
Kennet, or Lambourne at Newbury, in our way back. When does 
your new Duke give up Donnington ? or is it of any use to get a 
day out of the club on the big river ? They oftered me one (least- 
wise the secretary did). Is there aught to be killed in those tracks ? 
Next Wotton. I have ' taken the lunars ' (as the middies say) of 
Wotton on the big map of Surrey, and find it on the Blackwater 
rail, at such distance that I could leave my house at seven, and see 
the ghost of the author of ' Sylva ' (delightful old gentleman, too, 
to see) by nine. Therefore I could get there and back in a day 
and meet you. The fishing seems a chain of pondicules or pond- 
lets, fed by a chalk spring out of Leith Hill. As a geologist, I know 
what that ought to be. Leith Hill is 900 feet ; highest chalk point, 
save Inkpen Beacon, south of Hungerford. Valley of Holmesdale, 
say 500 — a good fall, and on chalk now and then, when with a 
gentle ripple and a clear burning sun, fish yield themselves to the 
embraces of a little saucy march-brown, or a minnow, and a fat 
black alder, or again a real yellow sally (which ain't yellow, but 
orange legs and lemon body, if you can get them). That's the 
sport ; to throw your fly, and let it sink (never draw it), and in 
half a minute take it out gently to see if aught's at the end of it, 
and if so, hit him as if you loved him, and hold on. Therefore let's 
go to Wotton ; but only for one day. You must come home with 
nie in the evening, per Blackwater rail ; my dogcart will meet us 
at the stadon, and we will start early next morning — whither ? / 
think, to my happy fishing-ground. We will fish both streams ; and, 
oh, my goodness ! — leastwise if we have a sou'wester — all's in that 
blessed sound. Shelley was an ass when he wrote his ode to the 
south-west wind. He didn't know what the dear old Zephyros was 
good for ; who does, but we the heirs of all creation, masters of 
'■ water the mother of all things ? ' 

"As for going to J. Paine, this is my ipsedavit. Paine Esquire's 
fishing was good when it was Paine Esquire's ; but since it has 
become clubbate, clubbified, or beclubbed, it is as a man might 
say, by too-many-respectable-of-the-town-of-Farnham-gents-continu- 
ally-and-with-thumping-brass-and-other-minnows-becoopered. 

" Given a strong May fly about two days on, and a warm sou'- 
wester with gleams, you might do the gun-trick, for there are M. 
fishes ; but don't you desire that you may obtain the said combina- 
tion of your planets ? Wheeler at Troyle only allows one rod, and 
has not enough for two. So / think the happy fishing-ground will 
be the place. 

" What a lot of nonsense I have writ ! and all about nothing ; 



A Fishing Trip. 243 

for I shall see you, my dear old fellow, on the 26th, d.v. But I like 

writing to you, and that's the truth ; you are so jolly ; and most 

people want to make me wiser when they write, as if 1 hadn't found 

out with Solomon, that all is vanity and vexation. 

* * * * * * 

" Enclosed is the portrait of the gentleman who told Thomas 
Hughes that he would hsh at Wotton on Whitmonday, totally for- 
getting that it was the club day, and he had the club sermon to 
preach, and the club dinner to eat. 1 am an ass, that I am, as the 
parson remarked. But Whit Tuesday I can go ; therefore, O 
friend, forgive, and correct the consequences of my exceeding 
stupidity, and try to fix Whit-Toosday. Now. If you can come 
early on Friday, you'll come in for my tithe luncheon, and be in- 
troduced to some of my jolly yeomen. If you can be here Mon- 
day, you'll see the club, and dine wi' em — oh that you would ! 
They would enjoy it so — and then we could start to Wotton simul- 
taneous next morning. 

" The Saturday fishing stands ; but this is a black planet for it. 
However, it'll change before then, and how the fish will feed when 
the change comes. If you get free, get a few sized stone flies, 
darkish color, fine lot of yellow about the tail ; also half-a-dozen 
smallest governors, but with pale partridge wing, and pale honey- 
colored tail ; pheasant wings and orange tails are only fit for cock- 
neys to catch dace with at Hampton Court. Mind what I say, 
I'll change off a brace of either from you for any flies of mine you 
like ; also bring me (and I will pay thee) i lb. avoirdups. of 
Skinner's best Bristol birdseye. You mind that last, or I'll send 
you back for it. Do you her ? 

" Opes opens. The glass has stopped going up, and is thinking 
about going down. Wind has chopt from N.N.W. to E.N.E. f^ith 
the sun which ain't as good as against ; but may indicate a break 
after two or three days of going round with the sun, and fine 
weather) evins grant ! for I'm froze. — Coughing in limbo, and 
every soul in the parish in the flenzies. Handkerchers is riz on 
the market I guess, this last month. 

" Mind your March browns — certain till the black alder comes 
out, which he won't here for three weeks, unless we have a sudden 
change." 

TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 
(Who had sent a Pamphlet on the Sabbath question.) 

EVERSLEY, Wednesday, July, 1856. 

" I have read through your pamphlet forthwith, and with very 
great delight. I cannot conceive why you should fancy that I 
should not agree with it ; for I agree with every word. I feel with 
you that the only ground on which Sunday amusements can be 



244 Charles Kings ley. 

really defended, is as a carrying out of the divineness of the sab- 
bath, and not as a relaxation of it ; but I won't put in bad words 
to you what you have put in infinitely better ones. And as I do 
not see how to lay down the ground of the sabbath better than 
you have done, so I do not see how to dogmatize about prac- 
tical applications any farther than the hints you have given. I 
have often fancied I should like to see the great useless naves 
and aisles of our cathedrals turned into museums and winter 
gardens, where people might take their Sunday walks, and yet 
attend service ; but such a plan could only grow up of itself, 
round a different service than ours, or at least round a service in- 
terpreted and commented on by very different preaching ; and till 
the Tartarus and Elysium superstition, which lies as really at the 
bottom of this question as at the bottom of all, is settled, I see 
no hope for that. It is you yourself who made me feel, in that 
pamphlet, how the Tartarus question comes in here, too, by a few 
lines towards the bottom of p. 15, ending, *a cast-away.' Those 
lines have made me see more than I ever did, the dignity of work 
and rest, and their analogy with God's work and rest — so justify- 
ing all that Parker, Emerson, or Carlyle have said about it, by 
putting it on a ground which they deny. Yet if the problem of 
human existence be to escape the impending torture — cui bono ? 
Who need care for rest, or work either, save to keep the body alive 
till the soul is saved ? Till that doctrine vanishes no one will feel 
any real analogy between his life and God's life, and will be as 
selfish and covetous in his work, and as epicurean in his rest, as 
men are now. 

" It was their ignorance of this dark superstition, I suppose, which 
enabled the old Jews to keep their sabbath (as they seem to have 
done from the few hints we have) as a day of 'rejoicing before the 
Lord,' in attempts more or less successful to consecrate to Him 
the simple enjoyments of life — in feasting, singing, and dancing. 
' In the midst go the damsels playing with the timbrels.' But this 
would be absurd here, and therefore I suppose it is, that the all- 
wise Book keeps the practical details so in the background, leaving 
each future nation to actualise the sabbath according to its own 
genius. I think what you have said on that quite admirable. 

" Nevertheless, we (after we are dead and alive for evermore) 
shall see that conception carried out on earth. 

In mighty lands beyond the sea, 
While honor falls to such as thee. 
From hearts of heroes yet unborn, 

" For, my dear master, though the solution of this, and many 
another problem which you have started, remains for our descend- 
ants, yet you must not grow sad, or think that you have not done 



Work for the Future. 245 

and are not still doing, a mighty work, in pointing out the la\ys by 
which alone they can be solved. You are like a man surveying a 
tropic forest, which he can only do by hewing his path yard by 
yard, unable to see a rood before him ; other men will follow him, 
till, and plant, and build, while he dies in faith, not having received 
the promises. And you will look down from heaven upon this na- 
tion working on under the new spiritual impulse which you have 
given it, and which will assuredly conquer, just as Captain Sturt 
will look down on that glorious Australian empire to-be, which he 
rescued out of the realm of Hades and the blank useless unknown, 
at the expense of his health, his eyesight, and his life. As Charles 
Mansfield, perhaps, may look down on that Paraguay which will 
surely reaHse some day his highest dreams of its capabilities, and 
through him too ; for his book (light though it seem) will not be 
forgotten, and other men will carry out the conception, which he, 
perhaps, could not have done from over-conscientiousness, and 
worship of too lofty an ideal. I can see, too, more and more, 
why, as you seem to lament, you are shut out so strangely from 
sympathy with flowers and beetles that you might have sympathy 
with men. And are they not of more value than many beetles ? 
Of the evangelical phraseology one word is true, that ' an immor- 
tal soul' (if people only knew what an immortal soul meant !) is of 
more value than all the material universe. And I can understand 
why there should be men like you, to whom it is said, ' Thou shalt 
not be tempted to waste thy time over the visible world, because 
thy calling is to work out that spiritual moral world, of which man 
can learn just nothing from the visible world — which he can only 
learn from his own soul, and the souls of other men.' 

" My dear master, I have long ago found out how little I can 
discover about God's absolute love, or absolute righteousness, from 
a universe in which everything is eternally eating everything else — 
infinite cunning and shift (in the good sense). Infinite creative 
fancy it does reveal ; but nothing else, unless interpreted by moral 
laws which are in oneself already, and in which one has often to 
trust against all appearances, and cry out of the lowest deep (as I 
have had to do) — Thou art not Siva the destroyer. Thou art not 
even Ahriman and Ormuzd in one. And yet, if Thou art not, 
why does Thy universe seem to say that Thou art ? Art Thou a 
' Deus quidam Deceptor,' after all ? — No. There is something in 
me — which not nature, but Thou must have taught me — which 
cries and will cry : Though Thou slay me, as Thou hast slain world 
on world already — though 1 and all this glorious race of men go 
down to Hades with the ichthyosaurs and the mammoths, yet will 
I trust in Thee. Though St. Peter's words be fulfilled (as they 
may to-morrow by the simplest physical laws) and the elements 
melt with fervent heat, and the earth and all the works therein be 
burned up — yet I know that my Redeemer, He who will justify 



246 Charles Kingsley. 

me, and make me right, and deliver me out of the grasp of nature, 
and proclaim my dominion over nature, liveth, and will stand, at 
the latter day upon the earth, and in some flesh or other I shall 
see God, see Him for myself as a one and accountable moral being 
for ever. But beetles and zoophytes never whispered that to me. 
Any more than the study of nature did to * * * * or to Cuvier 
himself It can teach no moral theology. It may unteach it, if 
the roots of moral theology be not already healthy and deep in the 
mind. I hinted that in ' Glaucus ' : but I would do no more, be- 
cause many readers mejin by ' moral ' and ' theology ' something 
quite different from what you and I do, and would have interpreted 
it into a mere iteration of the old lie that science is dangerous to 
orthodoxy. 

"But I won't talk of myself, save to say that I sometimes envy 
you, who are not distracted from work at the really human truths, 
by the number of joints in a grub's legs. I have been longing to 
hear from you ; and I ought to have written to you, but had noth- 
ing to say. My life runs on here in a very simple, easy way, what 
with the parish and Mrs. Kingsley, and the children, and a little 
literary work, in which I am trying to express in a new form the 
ideas which I have got from you, and which I have been trying to 
translate into all languages, from ' The Saint's Tragedy' to ' Glau- 
cus.' I have no other work on earth, and want none. 



to tom hughks, esq. 

eversley, 1856. 
"My Dear Old Lad, — 

" Froude cannot go with us ; so are you willing to go to Snow- 
don ? Killarney is finer, I know, and there are saumons ; but there 
are saumons in Snowdon — I know where, and we may have them 
in August if we be canny. I'll show you a rock where you are 
sure of one. And I want to go there, for several reasons ; but 
Killarney is very tempting ; only, as I get old, somehow, I don't 
like new places ; I like to thumb over the same book, and trot over 
the same bog, and feel 'homey' wherever I be. 

" Now, if so be as we go to Snowdon, there is our tracks, &c. 
Buy the two sheets of the Ordnance Maps (I'll go share in pence), 
which comprises the country from Aber and Bangor north, to Port 
Madoc, and Festiuiog south. Consider, behold, and perpend ; 
then send 'em on to me, in the coat pocket of one Hughes, Esq., 
from a Saturday night to a Monday morning, and we will talk it 
out. My plan would be this — 

There is no inn in Snowdon which is not awful dear, 
Excepting Pen-y-gwrydd (you can't pronounce it, dear), 
Which siandeth in the meeting of noble valleys three. 
One is the vale of Gwynant, so well beloved by me, 



Tom Taylor in the Fishing Party. 247 

One goes to Capel-Curig, and I can't mind its name, 

And one it is Llanberris Pass, which all men knows the same. 

Between which radiations vast mountains does arise, 

As full of tarns as sieves of holes, in which big fish will rise, 

That is, just one day in the year, if you be there, my boy, 

About ten o'clock at night, and then I wish you joy. 

Now to this Pen-y-gwrydd inn I purposeth to write. 

(Axing thy post town out of Froude, for I can't mind it quite). 

And to engage a room or two, for let us say a week, 

For fear of gents, and Manichees, and reading parties meek, 

And there to live like fighting-cocks at almost a bob a day, 

And arterwards toward the sea make tracks and cut away. 

All for to catch the salmon bold in Aberglaslyn pool. 

And work the flats in Traeth-Mawr, and will, or I'm a fooL 

And that's my game, which, if you like, respond to me by post ; 

But I fear it will not last, my son, a thirteen days at most. 

Flies is no object ; I can tell some three or four will do. 

And John Jones, Clerk, he knows the rest, and ties and sells 'em too. 

Besides of which I have no more to say, leastwise just now, 

And so, goes to my children's school and umbly makes my bow. 

"C. K." 

TO THE SAME. 

EVERSLEY, 1856. 

'■'■ Of all men on earth I should like to have Tom Taylor for a 
third. Entreat him to make it possible, and come and be a sal- 
vidge man with us ; and tell him I can show him views of the big 
stone work which no mortal cockney knows, because, though the 
whole earth is given to the children of men, none but we jolly 
fishers get the plums and raisins of it, by the rivers which run among 
the hills, and the lakes which sit a-top thereof. Tell him I'll show' 
him such a view from Craig-y-Rhaidyr of Snowdon from the sole of 
his foot to the crown of his head, as tourist never saw% nor will see, 
'case why, he can't find it ; and I will show him the original mouth 
of the pit, which is Llyn Dulyn, and the lightning lake, where the 
white syenite is blasted into shivers, which make you shiver, if you 
be sentimental— but /only think of the trouts— which the last I 
saw killed in Llyn Melch was 3^ pounds, and we'll kill his wife and 
family ; and crow-berry and desolate Alpine plants grow thereby, 
and we will sleep among them, like love among the roses, Thomas. 
And oh, what won't we do, except break our necks? and I'll make 
Tom Taylor come down over Craig-y-Rhaidyr, which is 700 feet of 
syenite, the most glorious climb I know, and the original short-cut 
to Ludlow at Festiniog ; but wouldn't do on a hot day, or a dark 
night. 

" I think you ought to come to me Saturday night, Strettel will 



248 Charles Kings ley. 

be here ; but I'll get )'ou a bed in the village. We should go to 
Reading by the 5.30 train, which will get us to Wolverhampton, 
8.35, and there wait for the Holyhead mail at 12.44, which will 
drop us at Bangor at 5 in the morning. There we can either go 
on by coach to Pen-y-Wynod, or walk on in the cool of the morn- 
ing, fishing as we go, and send our traps by coach, to be dropped 
for us. Pray bring a couple of dozen moderate lake-sized hooks, 
to tie flies on, for I am out of hooks, except the very biggest size, 
salmon-peel size, in fact. 

"You'll be pleased to hear that I got a fishing at Lady Mild- 
may's famous Warnborough preserve last night — the day was B. B. 
B., burning, baking, and boiling, and as still as glass, so I did not 
tackle-to till 5.30 — and between that and nine I grassed twenty fish, 
weighing twenty-two pounds, besides losing a brace more whoppers. 
Biggest brace killed, three pounds and two pounds — a dead bright 
calm, and a clear stream — in fifteen minutes I had three fish, two of 
three pounds and one of two pounds, but lost one of them after a 
long fight. Not so shady, Tom, for alt on shorm-fly a?id caperer. 

" Mind and don't get those flies too small. A size larger than 
what I said would be no harm, but I don't mind small hooks, if a 
big fly be tied thereon — see what a difference a wise man and a fool 
may make. (Here was a sketch of two flies — 'wise men's fly,' and 
'cockney maiden's fly.') Let's have lots for our money, say I, in 
flies, as in all things. Why do fish take your caperer, spite of his 
ugliness, but because he looks the fattest one they ever saw yet ? 
Think over these things 

" Poor dear Charles's * book has come at last. I think it perfect. 
Tell Ludlow he was quite right in altering as little as possible, and 
that I am to review it in ' Eraser's.' The 'Saturday' has already 
got a review in hand." 

At last the happy day in August was fixed, and the following 
invitation sent before the three friends started for Snowdonia : 

THE INVITATION. 

Come away with me, Tom, 
Term and talk is done ; 
My poor lads are reaping, 
Busy every one. 
Curates mind the parish, 
Sweepers mind the Court, 
We'll away to Snowdon 
For our ten days' sport, 
Fish the August evening 
Till the eve is past, 



' Letters from Paraguay, by Charles Blachford Mansfield.' ' 



The Invitation. 249 

Whoop like boys at pounders 
Fairly played and grassed. 
When they cease to dimple, 
Lunge, and swerve, and leap. 
Then up over Siabod, 
Choose our nest, and sleep. 
Up a thoiisand feet, Tom, 
Round the lion's head. 
Find soft stones to leeward 
And make up our bed. 
Eat our bread and bacon, 
Smoke the pipe of peace, 
And, ere we be drowsy, 
Give our boots a grease. 
Homer's heroes did so. 
Why not such as we ? 
What are sheets and servants ? 
Superfluity. 

Pray for wives and children 
Safe in slumber curled. 
Then to chat till midnight 
O'er this babbling world. 
Of the workmen's college, 
Of the price of grain. 
Of the tree of knowledge. 
Of the chance of rain ; 
If Sir A. goes Romeward, 
If Miss B. sings true. 
If the fleet comes homeward. 
If the mare will do, — 
Anything and everything — 
Up there in the sky 
Angels understand us, 
And no *' saints " are by. 
Down, and bathe at day-dawn. 
Tramp from lake to lake. 
Washing brain and heart clean 
Every step we take. 
Leave to Robert Browning 
Beggars, fleas, and vines ; 
Leave to mournful Ruskin 
Popish Apennines, 
Dirty Stones of Venice 
And his Gas-lamps Seven ; 
We've the stones of Snowdon 
And the lamps of heaven. 



250 Charles Kings ley. 

Where' s the mighty credit 

In admiring Alps ? 

Any goose sees " glory " 

In their " snowy scalps." 

Leave such signs and wonders 

For the dullard brain, 

As aesthetic brandy, 

Opium and cayenne ; 

Give me Bramshill common 

(St. John's harriers by), 

Or the vale of Windsor, 

England's golden eye. 

Show me life and progress, 

Beauty, health, and man ; 

Houses fair, trim gardens, 

Turn where'er I can. 

Or, if bored with " High Art," 

And such popish stuff. 

One's poor ear need airing, 

Snowdon's high enough. 

While we find God's signet 

Fresh on English ground. 

Why go gallivanting 

With the nations round ? 

Though we try no ventures 

Desperate or strange ; 

Feed on common-places 

In a narrow range ; 

Never sought for Franklin 

Round the frozen Capes : 

Even, with Macdougall,* 

Bagged our brace of apes ; 

Never had our chance, Tom, 

In that black Redan ; 

Can't avenge poor Brereton 

Out in Sakarran ; 

Tho' we earn our bread, Tom, 

By the dirty pen. 

What we can we will be» 

Honest Englishmen. 

Do the work that's nearest. 

Though it's dull at whiles, 

Helping, when we meet them. 

Lame dogs over stiles ; 

* Bishop of Labuan. 



Snow'donia. 251 

See in every hedgerow 
Marks of angels' feet, 
Epics in each pebble 
Underneath our feet ; 
Once a year, like schoolboys, 
Robin-Hooding go, 
Leaving fops and fogies 
A thousand feet below. 

On the nth of August they started, and in the train he writes 
home. 

"A glorious day. • Snowdonia magnificent. The sensation of 
going through the tubular bridge very awfiil and instructive. The 
sound of it, the finest bass note I have ever heard. Anglesey, an 
ugly wild flat place, like Torridge Moors, with great dunes of blown 
sand along the coast, fit for those weird old Druids " 

Pen-y-gwryd. 

" I have had, as far as scenery is concerned, the finest day I ever 
had. We started for Edno at 10, but did not find it till 2, because 
we mistook the directions, and walked from 10 till 1.30 over a 
Steinerer Maar, a sea of syenite and metamorphic slate which 
baffles all description, 2,000 ft. above Gwynant, ribs and peaks 
and walls of rock leaping up and rushing down, average 50 to 100 
ft., covered with fir, club moss, crowberry and bearberry, and ling, 
of course. Over these we had to scramble up and down, beating 
for Edno lake as you would beat for a partridge, but in vain. All 
we found was one old cock grouse, who went off" hollowing ' Cock- 
cock-what-a-shame cock-cock ' till we were fairly beat. In despair 
we made, not a dash, but a crawl, at Moel Meirch ('Margaret's 
Peak,' some pathetic story I suppose), which rises about 100 ft. 
above the stony sea, a smooth pyramid of sandy-pink syenite. 
Hughes got up first, by a crack, for the walls are like china, and 
gave a who-whoop ; there was Edno half a mile beyond, and. only 
a valley as deep as from Finchampstead church to the river to 
cross, besides a few climbs of 50 ft. So there we got, and eat our 
hard boiled eggs and drank our beer, and then set to, and caught 
just nothing. The fish, always sulky and capricious, would not 
stir. But the delight of being there again, 2,200 ft. up, out of the 
sound of aught but the rush of wind and water and the whistle of 
the sheep (which is just like a penny whistle ill-blown), and finding 
oneself at home there I Every rock, even the steps of slate and 

footholds of grass which and I used to use, just the same. 

Unchanged for ever. It is an awful thought. Soon we found out 
why the fish wouldn't rise. The cloud which had been hanging on 



252 Charles Kings ley. 

Snowdon, lowered. Hebog and Cnicht caught it. It began to 
roll up from the sea in great cabbage-headed masses, grew as dark 
as twihght. The wind rolled the lake into foam ; we staggered 
back to an old cave, where we shall sleep, please God, ere we 
come home, and then the cloud lowered, the lake racing along in 
fantastic flakes and heaps of white steam hiding everything 50 
yards off one minute, then leaving all clear and sharp-cut pink and 
green. While out of it came a rain of marbles and Minie bullets 
— a rain which searches, and drenches, and drills. Luckily I had 
on a flannel shirt. We waited as long as we dared, and then 
steered home by compass, for we could not see 50 yards, except 
great rows of giants in the fog, sitting humped up side by side, like 
the ghosts of the sons of Anak staring into the bogs. So home we 
went, floundering through morass and scrambling up and down the 
giants, which were crags 50 to 100 feet high, for we dared not pick 
our road for fear of losing our bearings by compass. And we were 
wet — oh, were we not wet ? but, as a make-weight, we found the 
' Grass of Parnassus ' in plenty, and as we coasted the vale of 
Gwynant, 1,500 ft. up, the sight of Snowdon, sometimes through 
great gaps of cloud, sometimes altogether hidden, the lights upon 
that glorious vista of Gwynant and Dinas, right down to Hebog — 
the flakes of cloud rushing up the vale of Gwynant far below us — 
no tongue can describe.it. I could see Froude's fir-wood, and 
home close, quite plain from Moel Meirch. It looked as if you 
could have sent a stone into it, but it was four miles off. I have 
got for you grass of Parnassus ; Alpine club-moss ; ladies' mantle ; 
ivy-leaved campanula ; beech fern ; A. Oreopteris (sweet fern). 

" The great butterwort is out of flower (as is the globe flower), 
but it stars every bog with its shiny yellow-green stars of leaves. 
Good bye. I am up at half-past three for Gwynant, which is full 
of salmon. 

" P.S. — I have just got your dear letter. Tell Rose that I am 
drying all the plants I can for her. . . . Tell Maurice I saw 
a grouse and a water-ouzel — lots of these last. . . ." 

When the brief holiday came to an end, the three friends were 
asked by the landlord of the inn, at Pen-y-gwryd, to write their 
names in his visitors' book. The following verses were speedily 
composed, and though the autographs have been cut out of the 
book by some tourist the lines were preserved : 

TOM TAYLOR. 
I came to Pen-y-gwryd with colors armed and pencils, 
But found no use whatever for any such utensils ; 
So in default of them I took to using knives and forks. 
And made successful drawings — of Mrs. Owen' s corks. 



Visitors Book at Pen-y-gwryd. 253 

CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
I came to Pen-y-gwryd in frantic hopes of slaying 

Grilse, Salmon, 3 lb. red-fleshed Trout, and what else there's no saying; 
But bitter cold and lashing rain, and black nor'eastern skies, sir. 
Drove me from fish to botany, a sadder man and wiser. 

TOM HUGHES. 
I came to Pen-y-gwryd a larking with my betters, 
A mad wag and a mad poet, both of them men of letters j 
Which two ungrateful parties after all the care I've took 
Of them, make me write verses in Henry Owen's book. 

T. T. 
We've been mist-soak'd on Snowdon, mist-soak'd on Glyder Vawr, 
We've been wet through on an average every day three times an hour ; 
We've walk'd the upper leathers from the soles of our balmorals ; 
And as sketchers and as fishers with the weather have had our quarrels. 

C. K. 

But think just of the plants which stuff 'd our box, (old Yarrel's gift,) 
And of those which might have stuff'd it if the clouds had given a lift : 
Of tramping bogs, and climbing cliffs, and shoving down stone fences 
For Spiderwort, Saussurea, and Woodsia ilvensis. 

T. H. 

Oh my dear namesake's breeches, you never see the like. 
He burst them all so shameful a crossing of a dyke. 
But Mrs. Owen patch'd them as careful as a mother. 
With flannel of three colors — she hadn't got no other. 

T. T. 

But can we say enough of those legs of mountain muttons, 

And that onion sauce lies on our souls, for it made of us three gluttons ? 

And the Dublin stout is genuine, and so's the Burton beer ; 

And the apple tarts they've won our hearts, and think of soufflets here ! 

C. K. 

Resembling that old woman that never could be quiet. 
Though victuals (says the child's song) and drink formed all their diet ; 
My love for plants and scrambling shared empire with my dinner, 
And who says it wasn't good must be a most fastidious sinner. 

T. H. 

Now all I've got to say is, you can't be better treated ; 

Order pancakes and you'll find they're the best you ever eated. 

If you scramble o'er the mountains you should bring an ordnance map ; 

I endorse all as previous gents have said about the tap. 



254 Charles Kings ley. 

T. T. 

Pen-y-gwryd, when wet and worn has kept a warm fireside for us, 
~-^ Socks, boots, and never-mention-ems, Mrs. Owen still has dried for us ; 
With host and hostess, fare and bill so pleased we are that going. 
We feel for all their kindness, 'tis we not they are Owen ! 

T. H. T. T. C. K. 

Nos Ires in uno juncti hos fesimus versiculos ; 
Tomas piscator pisces qui non cepi sed pisciculos, 
Tomas sciagraphus, sketches qui non feci nisi ridiculos, 
Herbarius Carolus montes qui lustravi perpendiculos. 

T. H. 

There's big trout I hear in Edno, likewise in Gwynant lake, 
And the governor and black alder are the flies that they will take. 
Also the cockabundy, but I can only say. 
If you think to catch big fishes I only Hope you may. 

T. T. 

I have come in for more of mountain gloom than mountain glory. 
But I've seen old Snowdon rear his head with storm-tossed mist wreaths ^ 
I stood in the fight of mountain winds upon Bwlch-Cwm-y-Llan, 
And I go back an unsketching but a better minded man, 

C. K. 

And I too have another debt to pay another way, 

For Kindness shown by these good souls to one who's far away. 

Even to this old colly dog who tracked the mountains o'er. 

For one who seeks strange birds and flowers on far Australia's shore. 

In the course of the autumn several American friends came and 
went : one from the Southern States, thus recalls his visit and the 
Rectory life at Eversley in 1856 : 

" . . . It is your own fault if Eversley does no more seem to 
me a name. When I think of Mrs. Kingsley and of you I seem to 
myself to be sitting with you still in those quaint old rooms. Still 
Maurice comes by with an insect or a flower, or just a general 
wonder and life in his eyes — still I hear the merry laugh of the little 
Princess, and see Dandy lying lazy, smiling and winking in the sun ; 
and I fill my olive-wood pipe, and saunter in and out of the aroma- 
tic old study and lounge, a new man and a happier one, on the 
sloping green lawn, under the good old fir-trees. And so I talk on 
as if I were with friends long known, and known long to be 
cherished much. All of which is wholly your fault and Mrs. Kings- 
ley's. ... If your are not too busy, I am sure you will write 



Preface to Taulers Sermons. 255 

and teU me how the novel advances (Two Years Ago ! ), and how 
Eversley in all its regions is. . . ." 

to francis russell, esq, 

Eversley, 1856. 

" I am horror-struck. Mrs. Kingsley declares I have never 

answered your letter The perpetual variety of work 

which I have been in must be my excuse if I am guilty. To-day, 
however, I have no excuse of work, being idle, from having been 
rolled into a pancake yesterday by a horse, who lay on me for five 
pleasant minutes at the bottom of a ditch. We were delighted with 
the Parnassia, and astonished at your knack of drying. I never saw 
flowers dried so well. As for the vivarium, everything and all 
information, is to be got from a man named A. Lloyd, 21, Portland 
Road. But if your friend be at Edinburgh, an hour's work at low 
tide at the back of Musselburgh pier will give him all that is wanted, 
and the hints in ' Glaucus ' ought to be enough as to preserving 
them alive. I have no news to tell you. I work in the parish and 
write, and seldom get out to kill a great pike or two. Such an 
autumn I never remember. All our summer gardens are still un- 
touched by frost, and the country looks as it did in June. 

" What do you think of the peace prospects ? France bankrupt ; 
the Emperor's life not worth two years' purchase. Russia bullying 
as badly as ever, and Italy at a dead-lock. I give the peace two 
years to live. Will it live one } Ought it to live one ? " 

Mr. Kingsley having been asked to write a preface to Tauler's 
Life, now writes to Miss Winkworth. 

Eversley, August 8, 1856. 

" I shall be most happy to write the preface to Tauler's Sermons. 
Believe me, I have no fear of Pantheism in Tauler. I shall be 
delighted to do all I can to spread your translation. Believe me, 
you will be doing a good work ; may it prosper ! I need not say, 
remember me most affectionately to Chevalier Bunsen, and thank 
him (ought I not to thank you too ?) for the ' Signs of the Times,' 

which has taught me much You will be glad to hear, 

I am sure, that your ' Theologia ' is being valued by every one to 
whom I have recommended it, and I have more hope of Tauler, 
because, as I suppose, he is more like the teaching (in form) to 
which the many have been accustomed, and which they can under- 
stand. I would certainly leave out the Romanist passages ; I am 
sure that they are really only excrescences, which have nothing to 
do with the real bone and muscle of his or any man's soul ; and if 
you do not omit them, your chance of a hearing is gone 



256 



Charles Kiitgsley. 



My hope is that the Evangelicals will read Tauler, even though they 
may shrink from the ' Theologia.' " 

The preface was written with great diflfidence. Like the preface 
to the " Theologia," it goes down into the deep things of God, and 
is worthy of its subject — especially the passages on the Mystics. 



.'' .^ m 







THE GREAT FIR-TREES ON THE RECTORY LAWN AT EVERSLEY. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Father in his Home — An Atmosphere of Joy — The Out-door Nursery — 
Life on the Mount — Fear and Falsehood — The Training of Love — Favorites 
and Friends in the House, in the Stable, and on the Lawn. 

" Cheerfulness or joyousness," said Jean Paul, in his ' Levana, 
or the Doctrine of Education,' " is the heaven under which every- 
thing but poison thrives. All new-born creatures require warmth, 
and what then is warmth to the human chicken but happiness ? 
One has but to give them play-room by taking away what may be 
painful, and their powers shoot up of themselves. The joyousness 
of children j Should they have anything else ? I can endure a 
melancholy man, but not a melancholy child ! " * 

And with this atmosphere of joyousness the parents tried to sur- 
round the children at the Rectory, and that not only as a means of 
present enjoyment, but as a tonic to strengthen the yoimg crea- 
tures to meet the inevitable trials of the future. We must pause a 
moment in the midst of the father's work and letters ; we have seen 
him in his church and parish, and now must see him in his home, 
where his children had the best of everything ; the sunniest and 
largest rooms indoors, and because the Rectory was on low ground, 
— the churchyard six feet above the living rooms, and the ground 
sloping upwards on three sides, — he built them a hut for an out- 
door nursery, on the " Mount," where they kept books, toys, and 
tea-things, spending long happy days on the highest and loveliest 
point of moorland in the glebe, a real bit of primaeval forest ; and 
there he would join them when his parish work was done, bringing 
them some fresh treasure picked up in his walk, a choice wild 
flower or fern, or rare beetle, sometimes a lizard or a field-mouse ; 
ever waking up their sense of wonder, calling out their powers of 
observation, and teaching them lessons out of God's great green 
book, without their knowing they were learning. 

And then the Sundays, the hardest day of the week to him, were 
bright to the children, who began the day with decking the graves 

* " Levana, or the Doctrine of Education," chap. 2. 
17 



258 Charles Kings ley. 

in the dear churchyard, an example which the poor people learnt 
to follow, so that before Morning Service it looked like a flower 
garden ; and when his day's work was done, however weary he 
might be, there was always the Sunday walk, a stroll on the moor, 
and some fresh object of natural beauty pointed out at every step. 
Indoors, the Sunday picture books were brought out. Each child 
had its own, and chose its subject for the father to draw, either 
some Bible story, or bird, beast, or flower mentioned in Scripture. 
Happy Sundays ! never associated with gloom or restrictions, but 
with God's works as well as His word, and with sermons that never 
wearied. 

Punishment was a word little known in his house. Corporal 
punishment was never allowed. His own childish experience of 
the sense of degradation and unhealthy fear it produced, of the 
antagonism it called out between a child and its parents, a pupil 
and its teachers, gave him a horror of it. It had other evils, too, 
he considered, besides degrading both parties concerned. " More 
than half the lying of children," he said, "is, I believe, the result 
of fear, and the fear of punishment." On these grounds he made 
it a rule (from which he never departed,) not to take a child, sus- 
pected of a fault, at unawares, by sudden question or hasty accu- 
sation, the stronger thus taking an unfair advantage of the weaker 
and defenceless creature, who, in the mere confusion of the mo- 
ment, might be tempted to deny or equivocate. " Do we not pray 
daily, ' Lord, confound me not,' and shall we dare to confound our 
own children by sudden accusation, suspicious anger, making them 
give evidence against themselves, when we don't allow a criminal 
to do that in a court of law ? The finer the nature the more easily 
is it confounded, whether it be of child, dog, or horse. It breaks 
all confidence between parent and child." " Do not train a child," 
he said to a friend, " as men train a horse, by letting anger and 
punishment be t\\Q first announcement of his having sinned. If 
you do, you induce two bad habits ; first, the boy regards his 
parent with a kind of blind dread, as a being who may be offended 
by actions which to hwi are innocent, and whose wrath he expects 
to fall upon him any moment in his most pure and unselfish happi- 
ness. Alas ! for such a childhood ! EtSws Xeyw ! Next, and worst 
still, the boy learns not to fear sin, but the punishment of it, and 
thus he learns to lie. At every first fault, and offence too, teach 



The Father in His Home. 259 

him the principle which makes it sinful — illustrate it by a familiar 
parable — and then, if he sins again it will be with his eyes open ! " 
He was careful, too, not to confuse or " confound " his children 
by a multiplicity of small rules. Certain broad, distinct laws of 
conduct were laid down. " It is difficult enough to keep the Ten 
Commandments," he would say, " without making an eleventh in 
every direction." This, combined with his equable rule, gave them 
a sense of utter confidence and perfect freedom with him. They 
knew what they were about and where to find him, for he had 
no "moods" with them, and if they had, he could be pitiful and 
patient. 

Like a brave man as he was, he kept his feelings of depression, 
and those dark hours of wrestling with doubt and disappointment 
and anxiety, which must come to every thinking, feeling human 
being, within the sanctuary of his own heart, unveiled only to one 
on earth, and to his Father in Heaven. And when he came out of 
his study, and met his children and guestg at breakfast, he would 
greet them with bright courtesy and that cheerful disengaged tem- 
per acquired by strict self-discipline, which enabled him to enter 
into all their interests, and the joy and playfulness of the moment. 
The family gatherings were the brightest hours in the day, lit up 
as they were with his marvellous humor. " I wonder," he would 
say, " if there is so much laughing in any other home in England 
as in ours." He became a light-hearted boy once more in the 
presence of his children, and still more remarkably so in that of 
his aged mother, when he saw her face clouded with depression 
during her later years, which were spent under his roof. He 
brought sunshine into her room whenever he entered it, as well as 
the strong spiritual consolation which she needed, and received in 
his daily ministrations by her bedside morning and evening. 

The griefs of children were to him most piteous. "A child over 
a broken toy is a sight I cannot bear," and when nursery griefs and 
broken toys were taken to the study, he was never too busy to 
mend the toy and dry the tears. He held with Jean Paul Richter 
again, that children have their " days and hours of rain," days 
when "the child's quicksilver" falls rapidly before the storms and 
cold weather of circumstances, and "parents should not consider 
or take much notice, either for anxiety or sermons," * lightly 

* •' Levana," chap. 8. 



26o Charles Kingsley. 

passing over these variations of temperature, except where they 
are symptoms of coming illness. And here his knowledge of 
physiology and that delicate organization of brain, which had 
given him many a sad experience in his own childhood, made him 
keen to watch and detect such symptoms. Weariness at lessons, 
and sudden fits of temper or obstinacy, he detected, as often 
springing from physical causes, and not to be treated hastily as 
moral, far less spiritual delinquencies, being merely, perhaps, 
phases of depression, which pass over with change of occupation, 
air and scene, and the temporary cessation of all brain work. 

Justice and mercy, and that rigid self-control, which kept him 
fi-om speaking a hasty word or harboring a mean suspicion, com- 
bined with a divine tenderness, were his governing principles in all 
his home relationships. It has been said of Sir William Napier's 
expression of countenance, in words that perfectly describe Charles 
Kingsley, " This tenderness was never so marked as when he was 
looking at or talking with little children. At such times the ex- 
pression which came over his face was wonderfully beautiful and 
touching. Towards these little creatures he had an eager way of 
stretching out his hands, as if to touch them, but with a hesitation 
arising from the evident dread of handling them too roughly. The 
same sort of feeling, too, he manifested in a minor degree, towards 
small animals, little dogs, kittens and birds." * 

And he respected as well as loved his children, from the early 
days when " Heaven lay about them in their infancy," and he 
hung with reverent and yet passionate wonder over the baby in its 
cradle, to grown-up years when he looked upon them as friends 
and equals. Home was to them so real a thing that it seemed in 
a way as if it must be eternal. And when his eldest son, in 
America, heard of the father's death, and of another which then 
seemed imminent, and foresaw the break up of the home, he stood 
as one astonished, only to say, in the bitterness of his soul : 

" I feel as if a huge ship had broken up piece by piece, plank by 
plank, and we children were left clinging to one strong spar alone 
— God ! . . , . Ah, how many shoals and quicksands of 
life he piloted me through, by his wonderful love, knowledge, and 
endurance — that great father of ours, the dust of whose shoes we 
are not worthy to kiss." .... 

* Life of Sir W. Napier. 



Father and Son, 261 

Nearly two years have passed since that bitter day, and his son, 
now at home once more, adds his memories to the many in this 
book of memories. 

" ' Perfect love casteth out all fear,' was the motto on which my 
father based his theory of bringing up his children ; and this theory 
he put in practice from their babyhood till when he left them as 
men and women. From this, and from the interest he took in all 
their pursuits, their pleasures, trials, and even the petty details of 
their everyday life, there sprang up a ' friendship ' between father 
and children that increased in intensity and depth with years. 

" To speak for myself, and yet I know full well I speak for all, 
he was the best friend — the, only true friend I ever had. At once 
he was the most fatherly and the most unfatherly of fathers — fatherly 
in that he was our intimate friend, and our self-constituted adviser ; 
unfatherly in that our feeling for him lacked that fear and restraint 
that make boys call their father ' the governor.' 

" I remember him as essentially the same to all of us always : 
utterly unchanged and unchanging since the time that he used to 
draw Sunday pictures for us to the time when he treated us as men 
and women of the world. 

"Ours was the only household I ever saw in which there was no 
favoritism. It seemed as if in each of our different characters he 
took an equal pride, while he fully recognized their different traits 
of good or evil ; for, instead of having one code of social, moral, 
and physical laws laid down for one and all of us, each child became 
a separate study for him ; and its little ' diseases au moral,^ as he 
called them, were treated differently according to each different 
temperament. 

The time above all others in which he opened out his heart to us, 
I think, was walking over on Sunday evenings to the services held 
in the little school-room at Bramshill. 

" I can see him now, on one of those many summer evenmgs, as 
he strode out of the back garden-gate with a sorrowful ' No ! go 
home. Sweep ! ' to the retriever that had followed us stealthily 
down the walk, and who now stood with an ear cocked and one 
paw up, hoping against hope, that he might be allowed to come 
on. I can feel him striding by me in the narrow path, while from 
the bright sky and the look of the country he drank in nature, till 
his eye lit up, his chest expanded, his step grew elastic, and he 
was a boy again with me. I can hear him tell me, at the bottom 
of the field, of a heavy fall out hunting over the fence into the 
meadow, and his ringings laugh at the recollection of his own mis- 
hap. His cheery ' Good afternoon ' to the cottager at the corner; 
the ' Well-done, boy,' and grim smile of approval, with which he 
greeted a jump over the gate at the top of the hill, on which he 



262 Charles Kings ley. 

sits a moment to take in the long sweeps of purple heather run- 
ning down to the yellow corn land — the brown roof of the Rectory 
bursting up among its trees — the long flats of the little valley, with 
its greens and cricketers. ' For cricket,' he used to say, ' is better 
than beer, and the poor lads don't get a chance to play on week- 
day : but remember you do.' 

" And then the walk on over the moor, chatting gaily of the 
fox's earth hard by, the green tiger-beetle that whirred from under 
our feet, the nightjar (goatsucker) that fluttered up from a sandy 
place in the path, and swooped madly away among the fir trees, 
while ever and anon some word would strike a deeper chord, and a 
few words would put something that mayhap had been an old 
stumbling-block, into an entirely new and true light. 

" All his deepest teaching, his strongest influence was, in a 
way, of the negative kind, inasmuch as there were no long lectures, 
no pithy arguments, but in his own life he showed, spoke, and 
lived his doctrines, so that his utter unselfishness, his genial tender-" 
ness towards their mother and themselves, gave the children an 
example that could not be passed by unnoticed, however unworthily 
followed. 

" The only thing that he really required of us was reverence and 
respect for people older than ourselves, which was also one of the 
most strongly mai'ked traits in his own character, and one which 
made him entirely ignore himself and his own superiority, in most 
cases, in speaking to men older than he was. 

" This required reverence, however, on our part, never created 
any feeling of restraint when with him ; too true a friendship ex- 
isted, and perhaps the brightest picture of the past that I look back 
to no ; — that we can all look back to is — not the eager look of 
delight with which he used to hail any of our little successes — not 
any special case of approval, but it is the drawing-room at Eversley 
in the evenings when we were all at home and by ourselves. There 
he sat, with one hand in mother's, forgetting his own hard work and 
worry in leading our fun and frolic, with a kindly smile on his lips, 
and a loving light in that bright grey eye that made us feel that, in 
the broadest sense of the word, he was our father." 

"To see him with you and the children," said a friend, "was 
to know what the man was. 1 made that remark when the chil- 
dren were young, and how tenfold more was this the case when 
they grew up around him." 

But to speak of his home without mentioning his love of animals 
would be to leave the picture incomplete. His dog and his horse 
were his friends, and they knew it, and understood his voice and 
eye. He was a perfect horseman, and never lost his temper with 



Love of all God s Creahtres. 263 

his horse, talking to and reasoning with it if it shied or bolted, as if 
it had been a rational being, knowing that, from the fine organiza- 
tion of the animal, a horse, like a child, will get confused by panic 
fear, which is only increased by punishment. His dog Dandy, a 
fine Scotch terrier, was his companion in all his parish walks, at- 
tended at the cottage lectures and school lessons, and was his and 
the children's friend for thirteen years. He lies buried under the 
great fir trees on the Rectory lawn, with this inscription on his 
gravestone, " Fideli Fideles," and close by " Sweep," a magnificent 
black retriever, and " Victor," a favorite Teckel, given to him by 
the Queen, with which he sat up during the two last suffering nights 
of the little creature's life. Cats, too, were a continual delight to 
him ; the stable had always its white cat, and the house its black 
or tabby, and he never tired of watching their graceful movements. 
His love of animals was strengthened by his behef in their future 
state — a belief which he held in common with John Wesley, and 
many other remarkable men. On the lawn dwelt a family of natter 
jacks (running toads), who lived on from year to year in the same 
hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to 
approach. He had two little friends in a pair of sand wasps, who 
lived in a crack of the window in his dressing-room, one of which 
he had saved from drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out 
into the sunshine to dry ; and every spring he would look out 
eagerly for them or their children, who came out of, or returned to 
the same crack. The little fly-catcher, who built its nest every 
year under his bedroom window, was a constant joy to him. He had 
also a favorite slow-worm in the churchyard which his parishioners 
were warned not to kill, from the mistaken idea prevalent in Ever- 
sley that slow-worms were poisonous. All these tastes he encouraged 
in his children, teaching them to love and handle gently without 
disgust all living things, toads, frogs, beetles, as works and wonders 
from the hand of a Living God. His guests were surprised one 
morning at breakfast when his little girl ran up to the open window 
of the dining-room holding a long repulsive-looking worm in her 
hand. " Oh ! daddy, look at this delightful worm." He had but 
one aversion which he could never conquer — to a spider, and it 
was of himself he spoke in ' Glaucus,' after saying " that every one 
seems to have his antipathic animal ; — T know one bred from his 
childhood to zoology by land and sea, and bold in asserting, and 



264 Charles Kingsley. 

honest in feeling, that all without exception is beautiful, who yet 
cannot, after handling, and petting, and examining all day long 
every uncouth and venomous beast, avoid a paroxysm of horror at 
the sight of the common house-spider ! " 

But, after all, a bird, he often said, was to him the most won- 
derful of God's creations ; he watched for the arrival of the birds of 
passage every spring with a strange longing, and seemed less restless 
after the swallow had appeared at Eversley. His eyes would fill 
with tears at each fresh arrival, and again each autumn as he 
grieved over their departure. He knew their every note, and was 
never tired of watching their character and habits. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

1857- 
Aged 38. 

" Two Years Ago " — The Crowded Church — Unquiet Sundays — Letters to Mr. 
Bullar — Dr. Rigg — Mr. Tom Hughes' Pietists and Ovftoc; — Letter from a Naval 
Chaplain — Indian Mutiny — The Romance of Real Life. 

The year 1857 opened brightly on Charles Kingsley, for it found 
him, for the first time for three years, in his own home for the 
winter at Eversle)', with his wife and his three children. 

" I am writing nothing now ; but taking breath, and working in 
the parish — never better than I am at present ; with many bless- 
ings, and, awful confession for mortal man, no sorrows ! I some- 
times think there must be terrible arrears of sorrow to be paid off 
by me — that I may be as other men are ! God help me in 
that day ! " 

He writes in January to his friend Mr. Hughes : — 

"The book is done ('Two Years Ago') ; the last proof going 
through the press now, and I know you will like it. ... I am 
better off now than I have been for years ! God be thanked, and 
God grant, too, that I may not require to be taken down by some 
terrible trouble, I often fancy I shall be. If I am, I shall deserve 
it, as much as any man who ever lived. I say so now — ^justifying 
God beforehand, lest I should not have faith and patience enough 
to justify Him when the punishment comes. . . . Many 
thanks for your wholesome letter — the rightest letter I have had 
for many a day. It has taught me a great deal, dear old man ; 
and you are nearer to God than I am, I see well. . . ." 

The " terrible trouble " came, — but not in the shape of personal 
grief or domestic affliction ; and, till the awful news from India 
burst upon England, all went well. He was made this year a Fel- 
low of the Linnean Society, which had been one of the ambitions 
of his life. Two visits from his dear friend Max Muller (soon to be 
more nearly related to him), refreshed his spirit. Mr. Chadwick, 



266 Charles Kings ley. 

with whose kind assistance he was hard at work on sanitary and 
educational subjects, came to discuss these questions with him, 
and a strange medley of visitors proposed themselves, and were 
-made welcome, at the Rectory. One day, a Unitarian minister, — 
clergymen of the Church of England, Dissenters, Americans — all 
came on missions of their own, and opened their hearts to him as 
they could to no other man. And on the lawn, under the old fir 
trees on long summer days, he and his guests discussed all things 
in heaven and earth. 

Sunday after Sunday he had the keen delight of seeing Crimean 
officers from Aldershot and Sandhurst in his congregation. Among 
others one who had been dangerously wounded in the Redan, at 
Sevastopol, and who, when lying between life and death at Scutari, 
had read "Yeast," and determined, if he ever came back alive, "to 
go and hear the clergyman preach who could give such a picture 
of a hunting scene as the one in the opening chapter." One Sun- 
day he came — while still on crutches — a stranger to Mr. Kingsley, 
but soon to become a friend, a constant attendant at church, and 
always a welcome guest at the Rectory early Sunday dinner. 

Each day the post brought some letter either of thanks for his 
books or asking counsel. He preached a series of sermons on the 
Creed, and one, by request of a member of the congregation who 
wrote anonymously, on the Intermediate and Future State, when 
he ventured to speak more jilainiy than he had yet done in the pul- 
pit on the subject so near his heart. The little church was often full 
of strangers, and one Sunday, when twelve carriages were standing 
in and outside the stable-yard, the sexton was heard to say, he 
could not think why there was " such flitting to and fro to our 
church on Sundays." Having heard the same preaching for fifteen 
years himself, he could not tell what the wonder of it was. To the 
rector this notoriety was simply painful : " I cannot bear having 
my place turned into a fair on Sundays, and all this talking after 
church." So to avoid the greetings of acquaintances and the ob- 
servation of strangers in the churchyard, he had a little back gate 
made into his garden, and escaped after service, through the ves- 
try door. His whole soul and energy were thrown so intensely into 
the services of his church, that when they were over he found 
quiet essential to help him to calm down from the excitement of 
his own earnestness. 



Self-denial. 267 

In the summer the news of the Indian mutiny came, which ab- 
sorbed and depressed him ; and some friends, knowing how hard- 
worked and sad he was, invited him to go with them to the Man- 
chester Exhibition, then open, with all its glorious pictures : but 
when the day came he could not make up his mind to leave a poor 
sick man, who he felt would miss his daily visits. With his keen 
love of art, it cost him a pang to give up the sight of such a collec- 
tion of pictures as might never again come together in England 
during his lifetime ; but he said he could not have enjoyed them 
while a parishioner was counting on seeing him. This triliing in- 
cident is mentioned to show how thorough and unselfish he was iu 
his parish work, which in this case could so easily have been passed 
over for three days to any neighboring clergyman. 

He seldom went to London ; and to a friend who pressed him 
to come up and hear one of his own songs finely sung there, he 
refused. " I love home and green fields more and more, and 
never lust either after Babylon or the Continent. . ." 

TO JOHN BULLAR, ESQ, 

EVERSLEY, Jamiary 27, 1857. 

"Your theory of speaking is all true. My defect was the same 
as your friend's, but mine came from an under jaw contracted by 
calomel, and nerves ruined by croup and brain fever in childhood. 
That prevented my opening my mouth ; that gave me a wrong use 
of the diaphragm muscles, till I got to speak inspiring, and never 
to fully inflate my lungs ; and that brought on the last and worst 
(yet most easily cured) spasm of the tongue. All the while, I could 
speak, not only plain but stentorially, while boxing, rowing, hunt- 
ing, skating, and doing anything which compelled deep inspira- 
tions. . . ." 

" Matthew xxii. 30, has been to me always a comfort. I am so 
well and really married on earth, that I should be exceedingly 
sorry to be married again in heaven ; and it would be very need- 
less. All I can say is, if I do not love my wife, body and soul, as 
well there as I do here, then there is neither resurrection of my 
body nor of my soul, but of some other, and I shall not be I. 
Therefore, whatsoever the passage means, it can't mean what 
monks make it. Ten years ago I asked in 'Yeast' the question 
which my favorite old monk legends (from which I have learnt 
volumes) forced on me, ' Who told you that the angelic life was 
single ? ' and I have found no answer yet. . . .''" 






Vf 



.1 //. 



268 Charles Kings ley, 

March 19, 1857. 

" Many thanks for your favorable opinion of the book ('Two 
Years Ago') ; but I fear you take Tom Thurnall for a better man 
than he was, and must beg you not to pare my maji to suit your 
own favorable conception ; but consider that that is the sort of man 
I want to draw, and you must take him as you find him. My experi- 
ence is, that men of his character (like all strong men till God's grace 
takes full possession of them) are weak upon one point — every thing 
can they stand but that ; and the more they restrain themselves from 
prudential motives, the more sudden and violent is the temptation 
when it comes. I have indicated as delicately as I could the world- 
wide fact, which all know and all ignore ; had I not done so, Thur- 
nall would have been a mere chimera fit only for a young lady's 
novel. 

" I feel deeply the change in one's imagination during the last 
twenty years. As a child I never could distinguish dreams from 
imaginations, imaginations from waking impressions ; and was often 
thought to be romancing when I was relating a real impression. 
In ill health from overwork about 16 to 18, I had spectral illusions 
often (one as clear as any of Nicolai's), accompanied with frightful 
nervous excitability, and inability to settle to any work, though 
always working at something in a fierce, desultory way. At twenty 
I found out tobacco. The spectres vanished ; the power of dull 
application arose ; and for the first time in my life, 1 began to be 
master of my own brain. 

" Now, I am in general the most prosaic and matter-of-fact of 
parsons. I cannot dream if I try. I go to my brain as to a store- 
house or carpenter's shop, from which I take out coolly what I 
want, and put it into the best shape I can. The German mode of 
thought, feeling, and writing, such as you find in Jean Paul or Novalis, 
lies behind me, as 'boy's love' belonging to an era 'when the 
spirits of the prophets' were not yet 'subject to the prophets.' 
Whether this be right or wrong, I know not ; but I confess the 
fact; — and if w€ ever get a week together, I fear that you will think 
me a most dull and frivolous fellow, who cares for nothing but to 
romp with your children, and pick flowers, and study the weather 
usque ad nauseam. 

"But here lies the difference between us. Your work is utterly 
of the head ; and you go for amusement to fancy, to imagination, 
to metaphysic. My work, whether parish or writing, lies just in the 
sphere wherein you play ; and if 1 played in that sphere too, I 
should go mad, or soften my brain, like poor Southey. So when I 
play, I think about nothing ; ride, fish, chat with the farmers over 
the crops, examine beetles and worms, and forget that I have a 
heart as much as I can. But I won't bore you more about 
myself" 



Mrs. Ga'skeir s Life of Charlotte Bronte. 269 

TO REV. DR. RIGG. 

EvERSLEY, April 5, 1857. 

" I have to thank you for an able and candid review of my writ- 
ings in the ' London Quarterly Review.' I am sorry to differ from 
you, but I take this opi)ortunity of assuring you that our differences 
are far fewer than you fancy, and that you would, I think, find me 
less unorthodox than you will have made your readers take me to be. 

"But one statement I must energetically contradict — that I am 
in anywise in theology a follower of Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I have 
pointed out in my works certain points on which, in past years, he 
has done good service ; but I am at a loss to conceive why my 
having done so should make any man think that I agree with his 
theology. This hasty assumption has led you to suppose that he is 
the 'mystic teacher' to whom I alluded in my review of Vaughan's 
' M3^stics,' a notion only equalled in wrongness by that of some 
people that I meant Mr. Urquhart. It has also led you into the 

mistake that I sympathise with his attack on Howard 

If you wish to see whether I am a Pantheist or not, n)ayT beg you 
to peruse pp. 243-247 of vol. iii. of 'Two Years Ago,' on which a 
Baptist review well remarked, that whatever I was, a Pantheist I 
was not." 

This correspondence led to a personal acquaintance and warm 
friendship between Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Rigg, now the respected 
head of the Wesleyan Training College, Horseferry Road, London. 

TO MRS. GASKELL. 

St. Leonard's, May 14, 1857. 

" Let me renew our long-interrupted acquaintance by compli- 
menting you on poor Miss Bronte's Life. You have had a delicate 
and a great work to do, and you have done it admirably. Be sure 
that the book will do good. It will shame literary people into 
some stronger belief that a simple, virtuous, practical home life is 
consistent with high imaginative genius ; and it will shame, too, 
the prudery of a not over cleanly, though carefully white-washed 
age, into believing that purity is now (as in all ages till now) quite 
compatible with the knowledge of evil. I confess that the book 
has made me ashamed of myself. ' Jane P2yre ' I hardly looked 
into, very seldom reading a work of fiction — yours, indeed, and 
Thackeray's * are the only ones I care to open. 'Shirley' dis- 

* Of Thackeray's " Vanity Fair " his estimate was very high. In a letter 
to liis wife ill 1850 he says, " I can read nothing but ' Vanity Fair,' over and 
over again, whicli fills me with delight, wonder, and humility. I would sooner 
have drawn Ravvdon Crawley than all the folks I ever drew." 



270 Charles Kings ley. 

gubted nae at the opening : and I gave up the writer and her books 
with the notion that she was a person who hked coarseness. How 
I misjudged her ! and how thankful I am that I never put a Avord 
of my misconceptions into print, or recorded my misjudgments of 
one who is a whole heaven above me. 

" Well have you done your work, and given us the picture of a 
valiant woman made perfect by sufferings. I shall now read care- 
fully and lovingly every word she has written, especially those 
poems, which ought not to have fallen dead as they did, and 
which seem to be (from a review in the current Fraser), of re- 
markable strength and purity. I must add that Mrs. Kingsley 
agrees fully with all I have said, and bids me tell you that she is 
more intensely interested in the book than in almost any which she 
has ever read." 

TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ, 

EVERSLEY, ytme 12, 1857. 

" Eight and thirty years old am I this day, Tummas ; whereof 
twenty-two were spent in pain, in woe, and vanitie ; and sixteen 
in very great happiness, such as few men deserve, and I don't 
deserve at all. And now I feel like old Jacob, ' with my staff I 
passed over Jordan, and now I am become two bands' — for why? 
I actually couldn't get home from Hastings except in two relays, 
what with servants, tutor, and governess. Well, Tom, God has 
been very good to me ; and I can't help feeding a hope that I may 
fight a good fight yet before I die, and get something done. I've 
done little enough yet. The best work ever I've done has been 
my plain parish work, and that I've done miserably ill, cowardly 
and idly of late, and bullying and second-hand dogmatic of old ; 
but perhaps I shall get training enough to go into the fight well before 
1 die ; and if not, I trust one's not going to be idle up there, Tom. 
Surely as long as there's a devil or devils, even an ass or asses, 
in the universe, one will have to turn out to the reveille now and 
then, wherever one is, and satisfy one's ^v^aos 'rage' or 'pluck,' 
which Plato averreth (for why, he'd have been a wraxling man, and 
^therefore was a philosopher, and the king of 'em) to be the root of 
all virtue. VVhy not, Tom ? Mayn't we? 

" Now to business. Tommy, which is fish. O that I could go to 
Lambourne Monday ! But I preach in town Sunday, and have 
three good fellows a dying in my parish, so that I must be at home 
Monday afternoon. But oh if you take Donnington Priory, won't 
I immortalise you in verse and prose ? Oh the bliss ! I think the 
boys will catch o. The fish will be glutted with the fly, and atten- 
dant Naiads pitying, holding basins under their noses : mortal 
aldermanic they were Wednesday here. I caught a fairish lot on 
the Caperer, which they took as a relish to the heavy fly ] but the 



On Tom Brown. 271 

moment they were ashore the Mayflies came up. Oh a Dover 
steamer in a chopping sea was cleanly to it. Poor carnal parties ! 
Why shouldn't they tuck while they can ? Mayflies come to them 
at Whitsuntide, as club-feasts do to the clods, to give them one 
jolly blow out in the year, and it's a 'pleasure to look at them. 
That's why good fishing days always fall on Sundays, Tom, to give 
the poor fish a good day's appetite (dinner always ready), and 
nobody to catch them while they're enjoying it. 

" Also make a note of this. A party widi doubtful h's, and 
commercial demeanor, appears on Wednesday on our little stream, 
and kills awfully. I'hrows a beautiful line, and catches more than 
I have in a day for this two years here ; fly, a little green drake, 
with a ridiculous tufted bright yellow wing, like nothing as ever 
was. Stood aghast ; went home and dreamed all the spiders' webs 
by the stream were full of thousands of them, the most beautiful 
yellow ephemerce with green peacock-tail heads. Oh the beauty 
of them ; and wasn't I riled when I found it was all for fancy ? 
"But won't I ' realoirioize,' as the Scots parsons say, those little 
fellows next year, and apply them to the part affected ? " 

EvERSLEY, 1857. 
" I have often been minded to write to you about ' Tom Brown,' 
so here goes. I have puffed it everywhere I went, but I soon 
found how true the adage is that good wine needs no bush, for 
every one had read it already, and from every one, from the fine 
lady on her throne, to the red-coat on his cock-horse, and the 
school-boy on his forrum (as our Irish brethren call it), I have 
heard. but one word, and that is, that it is the jolliest book they 
ever read. Among a knot of red-coats at the cover-side, some 
very fast fellow said, ' If I had had such a book in my boyhood, I 
should have been a better man now ! ' and more than one capped 
his sentiment frankly. Now isn't it a comfort to your old bones 
to have writtten such a book, and a comfort to see that fellows 
are in a humor to take it in ? So far from finding men of our 
rank in a bad vein, or sighing over the times and prospects of the 
rising generation, I can't help thinking they are very teachable, 
humble, honest fellows, who want to know what's right, and if they 
don't go and do it, still think the worse of themselves therefore. I. 
remark now, that with hounds, and in fast company, I never hear 
an oath, and that, too, is a sign of self-restraint. Moreover, drink- 
ing is gone out, and, good God, what a blessing ! I have good 
• hopes, and better of our class, than of the class below. They 
are effeminate, and that makes them sensual. Pietists of all ages 
(George Fox, my dear friend, among the worst), never made a 
greater mistake (and ihey have made many), than in fancying 
that by keeping down manly Ovjjlo^, which Plato saith is the root 
of all virtue, they could keep down sensuality. They were dear 



272 Charles Kings ley. 

good old fools. However, the day of ' Pietism ' is gone, and 
' Tom Brown ' is a heavy stone in its grave. ' Him no get up 
again after that,' as the niggers say of a buried obi-man. I am 
trying to polish the poems : but Maurice's holidays make me idle. 
Povvles' school has been most successful for him ; he has come 
home healthier and jollier than ever he was in his life, and is 
truly a noble boy. 

" Sell your last coat and buy a spoon. I have a spoon of huge 
size (Fariow his make). I killed forty pounds weight of pike, &c., ■ 
on it the other day, at Strathfieldsaye, to the astonishment and 

delight of , who cut small jokes on ' a spoon at each end,' &c., 

but altered his note, when he saw the melancholies coming ashore, 
one every ten minutes, and would try his own hand. I have 
killed heaps of big pike round with it. I tried it in Lord Eversley's 
lakes on Monday, when the fish wouldn't have even his fly. Ca- 
pricious party is Jaques. Next day killed a seven pounder at 
Hurst. 1 am going again to the Speaker's, for he wants his jack 
killed down, and has hurt his leg so that he can't do it, wherefore 
he has sent for me. Ain't I a slaved party; ill-used by aristocrats, 
and compelled to fish in waters where his last was eleven pounds, 
and whei^e he has had them out of twenty-four and eighteen?" 

During the course of the year a letter arrived from a chaplain 
of a Queen's ship on the Nova Scotia station, who, after apolo- 
gizing for the liberty he w4s taking in writing to thank him for his 
books, adds — 

" I found on our arrival here (Halifax) that an edition of ' Two 
Years Ago,' published at Boston, was to be had ; but no one seemed 
to know it. My purpose in writing to you is partly for encourage- 
ment in the preaching of views to which I am becoming the more 
and more attached, and partly to tell you how much your books 
are hked by naval men. I could, also, tell you of good resulting 
from the reading of them. For example, I know one instance of 
an officer, who is a man of cultivated mind, and yet he told me 
that until he had read ' Two Years Ago,' he had never said his 
prayers (for years past) except when in trouble. It would fill up 
this letter altogether, were I to tell you of all the praises I hear 
from every one of my mess-mates who have read this book. I con- 
sider it a duty to get them all to read it, and ' Westward Ho ! ' ; as 
I believe, both are calculated to make men better. I have got 
them both for the sick quarters, and hope to have them generally 
read by the ship's company as well 

" About sailors. I have always found that they came willingly 
to church. My preaching since I have read your ' Sermons for the 
Times,' speaks more of love than ever ; I always held the same 



Sailors and " Two Years Ago!' 273 

opinions, but was afraid of the preaching of them ; now, however, 
that 1 find one whom I beheve to be both wise and good not afraid, 
I do not see why I should be so either. 

" I have a bible class for the men. which I tried in the ' cock- 
pit ' and failed ; on the main-deck, and failed ; and at last, taking 
a lesson from ' Two Years Ago,' I resolved to go to the men instead 
of expecting them to come to me — and thus, I have at last suc- 
ceeded. My plan was the following : — I went to the fore-capstan, 
round which the men smoke, and laying my book down thereon, I 
said I was come to read a chapter for them, and that those who 
did not wish to be present, might move ' aft ' — and that, so far from 
wishing to interrupt their smoking time (evening) it was my special 
desire that they should continue smoking, their attention being all 
I wanted. I have this class now regularly on Thursday evenings, 
and a more attentive or orderly audience could not be seen ; the 
men are beginning to feel an interest in it and congregate there 
some time before the hour arrives. I wish you could see them, 
such fine manly handsome fellows. I know it is doing good. It 
might at first sight be supposed that the time, place, and circum- 
stances would be calculated to lower my position ; but so far from 
that, the men know that I must be in earnest, and they are more 
gentle and respectful than ever. I need hardly say that I preach 
love to them as the great inducement, and agree with you that no 
other plan should be tried .... From the ' Sermons of the 
Times,' I have learnt much, and now have clearer ideas on many 
of the subjects " 

After some particularly bitter newspaper attacks, a friend writes 
to him to tell him the* effect " Two Years Ago " had had on a dis- 
tinguished member of one of our universities, who had had no settled 
faith for years. 

" I write for your soul's comfort in your noble and much tra- 
duced work in God's service. Poor dear * * * attributed his 
being convinced of sin, and driven to seek Christ the Lord and 
Savior, to your last book, especially that fearful account of Elsley 
Vavasour's chase across the mountain, and Tom Thurnall's expe- 
rience in the Russian dungeon. He had always said to me that he 
never could understand what was meant by the sense of sin as 
spoken of in the Bible, and by Maurice in his Theological Essays. 
But one night, about six weeks before his death, when he awoke in 
pain and darkness in the middle of the night, the remembrance of 
that terrible isolation which you had described in these passages 
came upon him in awful horror, and drove him to seek help from 
God. No one who knew * * * before that time and after it 
could fail to see how great the change was that was wrought in him. 
18 



2 74 Charles King shy. 

He only spoke of it to me once, and as I knew how distasteful to 
him was all self-analysis at least to others, I never re-opened the 
matter, but after his death 1 found he had said the same thing 
|-Q * * *_ Now, my dear Kingsley, I trust this will be some com- 
fort to you in the midst of all this foolish calumny. As I said, I 
meant to have written of this to Mrs. Kingsley. I know how she 
would prize such a fact in connection with such a man." 



TO REV. GEORGE HENSLOWE. 

[Who had written to hun as to the possibility of a sense of humor in the 

Creator.] 

EvERSLEY, Sept. II, 1857. 

" I cannot see how your notions can be gainsayed, save by those 
who have a lurking belief that God is the Devil, after all — a sort of 
unjust and exacting Zeus, against whom they would rebel if they 
had Prometheus' courage : but not having that, must flatter him 
instead. 

" The matter presents itself to me thus. I see humor in animals, 
e.g., a crab and a monkey, a parrot, a crow. I don't find this the 
result of a low organization. In each of these four cases the animal 
is of the highest belonging to this class. Well ; there the fact is ; 
if I see it, God must see it also, or I must have more insight than 
God into God's own works. Q. E. Abs. 

" Then comes a deeper question. God sees it : but is. He 
affected by it ? I think we could give no answer to this, save on 
the ground of a Son of God, who is that image of the father in 
whom man is created. 

" If the New Testament be true, we have a right to say of 
humor, as of all other universally human faculties — Hominus est 
= Ergo Christi est = P2rgo Dei est. 

" I must accept this in its fulness, to whatever seemiiigly startling 
and dangerous result it may lead me, or my theology and my 
anthropology part company, and then, being philosophically unable 
to turn Manichee (whether Calvinist or Romanist), the modern 
Pantheism would be the only alternative ; from which homeless 
and bottomless pit of immoral and unphilosophical private judg- 
ment may God deliver us and all mankind. And you will see that 
into that Pantheism men will rush more and more till they learn to 
face the plain statement of the creed, ' And He was made man,' 
and the Catholic belief, that as the Son of man, He sits now cV 
(tois) ovpavoh, and on the very throne of God. Face the seemingly 
coarse anthropomorphism of the Old Testament, and believe that the 
New Testament so far from narrowing it, widens and deepens it. 

" This is my only hope and stay, while I see,.belief and practice 
alike rocking and reeling to decay. May God keep it alive in me 
and in you, recollecting always that to do the simple right thing 



The Mutiny in India. 275 

which hes at our feet, is better than to have ascended into the third 
heaven, and to have all yvwo-ts and all mysteries. 

" You sign yourself by a very noble name. Are you a son of 
that good and wise man to whose lectures about Chara and Nitella I 
have listened in Quy-fen eighteen years ago ? I shall be happy to 
hear from you again." 

He gave many lectures in the diocese this autumn for Mechanics' 
Institutes, and among others his " Thoughts in a Gravel Pit," and 
one on " Chaucer," also a long promised one at Bristol on " Great 
Cities, their Influence for Good and Evil." * 

He was just now engaged on a volume of poems for publication, 
and they had been advertised by Messrs. Parker for Christmas. 
But while preparing them for the press he was asked to write an 
article on Sanitary reform. This work, and the terrible depression 
produced on his mind by the Indian mutiny, prevented his being 
able to get them ready in time. The agony of his mind as the 
details from India poured in, though he had no relatives or per- 
sonal friends engaged in the mutiny, was terrible, and he writes to 
Mr. Bullar: — 

"... Do not talk to me about India, and the future of India, 
till you can explain the past — the past six months. O Bullar, no 
man knows, or shall know, what thoughts they have cost me, 

Meanwhile, I feel as if I could dogmatise no more. 

I dare say you are right and I wrong. I have no heart, at least, to 
continue any argument, while my brain is filled with images fresh 
out of hell and the shambles. Show me what security I have that 
my wife, my children, should not suffer, from some unexpected 
outbreak of devils, what other wives and children have suffered, 
and then 1 shall sleep quiet, without longing that they were safe 
out of a world where such things are possible 

" You may think me sinful for having such thoughts. My experi- 
ence is, that when they come, one must face them, do battle with 
them deliberately, be patient if they worst one for a while. For by 
all such things men live, in these is the life of the spirit. Only by 
going down into hell can one rise again the third day. I have been 
in hell many times in my life ; therefore, perhaps, have I had some 
small power of influencing human hearts. But I never have looked 
hell so close in the face as I have been doing of late. Wherefore 
I hope thereby to get fresh power to rise, and to lift others heaven- 
ward. But the power has not come yet And 

* Published in the " Miscellanies." 



276 Charles Kings ley. 

I can only cry, ' O Lord, in Thee have I trusted, let me never be 
confounded. Wherefore should the wicked say, where is now his 
God?' 

" But while I write now, and while 1 fret most, there comes to 
me an inner voice, saying — What matter if thou art confounded. 
God is not. Only believe firmly that God is at least as good as 
thou, with thy ' finite reason,' canst conceive ; and He will make 
thee at last able to conceive how good He is, and thou shalt have 
the one perfect blessing of seeing God. 

" You will say I am inconsistent. So I am ; and so, if read 
honestly, are David's Psalms. Yet that very inconsistency is what 
brings them home to every human heart for ever. The words of a 
man in real doubt and real darkness, crying for light, and not cry- 
ing in vain. As I trust I shall not. God bless you." 

to george brimley, esq. 

eversley, 1857. 
" Dear Brimley, 

" Your letter has much comforted me ; for your disapproval is 
really to me a serious thing, from what I know of your critical 
powers ; while my own hopeless inability to judge of the goodness 
or badness of anything I write makes me more and more modest 
about my own ' ccsthesis.' That word ' masque ' I will omit here- 
after. The truth is, that I have drawn, modelled in clay, and pic- 
ture fancied, so much in past years, that I have got unconsciously 
into the slang — for slang it is — and I am faulty therein. 

" About the melodrama on the Glyder, I quite agree with you 
that some folks will carp. There was a cantankerous lady (I heard 
who she was, but forget — why not ?) who attacked me fiercely on 
that score, anent ' Westward Ho ! ' She knew not that the one 
point which infuriated her most, viz., the masts and sails and people 
looking red-hot against a black background instead of vice versa, 
when Amyas is struck blind, was copied from the experience of a 
near relative who was struck senseless by a flash of lightning, and 
squinted and had weak eyes for years after. So much for the re- 
ward which one gets for copying nature ! 

" In the Glyder scene I have copied nature most carefully, 
having surveyed every yard of the ground this summer. The vision 
of Snowdon towering and wet against the background of blue flame, 
appearing and disappearing every nroment, was given me by Froude, 
who lived there three years, and saw it, and detailed it carefully, 
begging me to put it in ! But why go on justifying ? I don't think 
the deerstalkers of Park Lane and Belgravia will sneer, because 
they see such things in their field-sports, and are dehghted when 
such men as Maxwell or St. John, or perhaps I — for they have told 
me so often — can put them into words for them ; but the true 



Nature s Melodrama. 277 

snubbers are the cockneys who write for the press, and who judge 
of the universe from the experiences of the London suburbs, or a 
summer's watering-place trip. I have seen as awful sights here at 
the breaking up of a long drought; and what I wanted to do was 
boldly to defy criticism on that very point, calling the chapter 
'Nature's Melodrama,' and showing, meanwhile, that the ' melo- 
dramatic element ' was a false, and morbid, and cowardly one, by 
bringing in Naylor and Wynd, thinking the very same horrors capi- 
tal fun. I would not have taken Elsley there if I had not taken 
them there also, as a wholesome foil to his madness. 

" Claude and Sabina are altogether imaginary. Ever since 
' Yeast,' I have been playing with them as two dolls, setting them 
to say and do all the pretty iia'ive things any one else is too re- 
spectable to be sent about, till 1 know them as well as I know you. 
I have half-a-dozen pet people of that kind, whom I make talk and 
walk with me on the moors, and when I am at my parish work ; 
and charming company they all are, only they get more and more 
wilful, being ' spoilt children,' and I cannot answer for any despe- 
rate aberration of theirs, either in doctrine or practice, from hour 
to hour. Like all the rest of human hfe, the best things which I 
get out of them are too good to be told. So nobody will ever know 
them, save a little of the outside. Writing novels is a farce and a 
sham. If any man could write the simple life of a circle of five 
miles round his own house, as he knew, and could in many cases 
swear it to be, at that moment, no one would believe it ; and least 
of all would those beHeve it who did believe it. Do you ask the 
meaning of the paradox ? 

" Those who know best that the facts are true, or might be true, 
would be those most interested in declaring them impossible. 
When any man or woman calls anything 'over-drawn,' try them, if 
you can, by the argument — 

" ' Now, confess. Have you not seen, and perhaps done, 
stranger things ? ' And in proportion to their honesty and genial- 
ity they will answer, ' Yes.' 

" I have never found this fail, with people who were human, and 
were capable of having any ' history ' at all." 



CHAPTER XVIIL 

1858. 
Aged 39. 

Eversley Work — Diphtheria — Lectures and Sermons at Aldershot — Blessing the 
Colors of the 22nd Regiment — Staff College — Advanced Thinkers — Poems 
and Santa Maura — Letter from Dr. Monsell — Letters to Dr. Monsell, Dean 
Stanley, &c. — Letter from Captain Congreve — Birth of his Son Granville — 
Second Visit to Yorkshire. 

This was a year of severe work and anxiety, for he could not 
afford a curate. Diphtheria, then a new disease in England, ap- 
peared in the neighborhood, and was very fatal. It created a 
panic, and to him it was a new enemy to be hated, and fought 
against, as it was his wont to hate and fight against every form of 
disease, and especially those which he suspected to come from 
malaria, and other preventable causes. Its prevalence among 
children, and cases in his own parish, affected and excited him, 
and he took counsel with medical men, as to how to meet the 
earliest symptoms of the new foe. When it reached Eversley, 
some might have smiled at seeing him, going in and out of the cot- 
tages with great bottles of gargle under his arm, and teaching the 
people — men, women, and children, to gargle their throats, as a 
preventive ; but to him it was terrible grim earnest, acting as he 
did on Thomas- Carlyle's principle, "Wheresoever thou findest 
disorder, there is thy eternal enemy ; attack him swiftly, subdue 
him, make order of him." 

His work for the Hants and Wilts Education Society, to which 
he had bound himself to give so many lectures annually, in lieu of 
subscription, was heavy : he lectured on local geology, on Chau- 
cer, on Jack of Newbury, and Flodden Field, and on the Days of 
the Week ; in those days seldom repeating the same lecture. The 
position of Eversley with rtigard to Chobham, Aldershot, and 
Sandhurst, brought him more and more in contact with military 
men, and widened his sphere of influence. The society of soldiers 



The Soldier Spirit. 279 

as a class was congenial to him. He inherited much of the soldier 
spirit, as he inherited soldier blood ; and the few of-his direct an- 
cestors' portraits that have survived the wreck of his family, are all 
of men .in uniform, including, with others of earlier date, General 
Kingsley, Governor of Fort William, colonel of the 20th Regiment, 
who fought at the battle of Minden ; and among the family papers 
there are commissions with the signature of the reigning authori- 
ties. He had himself, at one time, thought of the army as a pro- 
fession, and had spent much time as a boy in drawing plans of 
fortifications ; and after he took holy orders it was a constant occu- 
pation to him, in all his walks and rides, to be planning fortifications. 
There is scarcely a hill-side within twenty miles of Eversley, the 
strong and weak points of which in attack and defence during 
a possible invasion, he has not gone over with as great an intensity 
of thought and interest as if the enemy were really at hand ; and 
no soldier could have read and re-read Hannibal's campaigns. 
Creasy' s Sixteen decisive battles, the records of Sir Charles Na- 
pier's Indian warfare, or Sir William's magnificent history of the 
Peninsular War, with keener appreciation, his poet's imagination 
enabling him to fill up the picture and realize the scene, where his 
knowledge of mere mihtary detail failed. Hence the honor he 
esteemed it to be allowed to preach to the troops at Aldershot, 
and to lecture to military men there and at Woolwich. His eyes 
would kindle and fill with tears as he recalled the impression made 
on him on Whit Sunday, 1858, by the sound heard for the first 
time, and never to be forgotten, of the clank of the officers' swords 
and spurs, and the regular tramp of the men as they marched into 
church, stirring him like the sound of a trumpet. He lectured this 
year, too, to the troops in the camp on Cortez, He was also 
asked by Mrs. William Napier to bless the new colors which she 
l^resented to her father's old regiment, the 22nd, of which Sir 
Charles Napier himself had spoken when he, as its distinguished 
colonel, presented colors to the ist battalion some years 
before : 

" That brave regiment which won the battle of Meanee — won 
the battle of Hydrabad — won Scinde for England ; . . . . 
the regiment which stood by the King of England at Dettingen, 
stood by the celebrated Lord Peterborough at Barcelona; and 
into the arms of whose grenadiers the immortal Wolfe fell on the 



28o Charles Kings ley. 

heights of Abraham. Well may I exult in the command of such a 
regiment," (Life of Sir Charles Napier.) 

After the ceremony, Mrs. Napier went round the ranks, among 
which were many old veterans who had survived from the great 
Indian ba,ttles, in which her father commanded them in the field, 
and introduced Mr. Kingsley to them. That too was a red letter 
in his calendar, as he called it. He camped out a night this sum- 
mer with the Guards on Cove Common. His sermons in camp 
brought many officers over to Eversley Church, and led to the 
formation of friendships which were very dear to him. During the 
earlier years of the Staff College, Sandhurst, of which his valued 
friend General William Napier was commandant, he was often 
invited to mess, and was received with a marked respect, which did 
as much honor to his hosts as to their guest. That he never 
shrunk from showing his colors, the following reminiscence from 
one who was present will testify : — 

" We had among us one or two so-called ' advanced thinkers,' 
men who were inclined to ridicule religion somewhat. I remem- 
ber once the conversation at mess took that direction, and Mr. 
Kingsley stopped it at once and forever in the pleasantest, and at 
the same time most effectual manner, by pointing out how unmanly 
and ungenerous it was to endeavor to weaken a faith which was a 
trusted support to one's friends. He said it was impossible to use 
arguments of this kind without causing pain to some, and even if a 
jnan could hope to produce conviction, it could only be by taking 
from his convert much of the present joy of his life. Would any brave 
man desire to do that for the mere sake of a rhetorical triumph ? 
There was the regular little apology, ' Forgot for a moment that 
there was a clergyman at the table,' &c. 

" ' All right, never mind, but you must not apologize on that 
ground. We are paid to fight those arguments as you soldiers are 
to do another sort of fighting, and if a clergyman is worth his salt, 
you will always find him ready to try a fall with you. Besides, it is 
better for your friends, if they are to have the poison, to have the 
antidote in the same spoon.' " 

Early this year his poems were published, and among them 
"Santa Maura," which had a powerful effect on thoughtful people ; 
the story being so little known. 

" I am delighted," he says to Mr. Maurice, "that you are satis- 
fied with ' St, Maura.' Nothing: which 1 ever wrote came so out 



St Mattra. 281 

of the depths of my soul as that, or caused me during writing (it 
was all done in a day and a night) a poetic fervor such as I never 
felt before or since. It seemed to me a sort of inspiration which I 
could not resist ; and the way to do it came before me clearly and 
instantly, as nothing else ever has done. To embody the highest 
spiritual nobleness in the greatest possible simplicity of a young 
village girl, and exhibit the martyr element, not only free from 
that celibate element which is so jumbled up with it in the old 
myths ; but brought out and brightened by marriage love. That 
story, as it stands in the Acta SS., has always been my experimen- 
tiiin criicis of the false connection between martyrdom and celibacy. 

But enough of this selfish prosing I have no novel 

in my head just now. I have said my say for the time, and I want 
to sit down and become a learner, not a teacher, for I am chiefly 
impressed with my own i)rofound ignorance and hasty assumption 
on every possible subject." 

The volume of poems led to his first communication with Dr. 
Monsell, who writes : — 

GuLVAL Vicarage, Penzance, April 14, 1858. 
" Rev. and dear Sir, 

" I have read with wondrous delight your beautiful book of 
poetry just come out, and thank you most sincerely for a great 
deal of it as a source of very pure pleasure, and a great deal of it 
as very deep and earnest teaching in holy things. One poem 
especially I thank God for, that entitled ' St. Maura.' I could 
wish that sent out into the world by itself, as a little tract, to be 
slipt into the hands of the suffering, or of those who are sometimes 
in the midst of great blessings disposed to make too much of the 
little trials they are called on to endure. It would strengthen and 
brace up to high endeavors and endurings many who now little 
dream of what real endurance for the love of Christ means. I 
know it was so with me the other day. I had heard from home of 
some parish vexations, which pained me far more than any earthly 
ill should do. I took uj) that dear book, read that one poem for 
the first time aloud to my wife and children, and as I laid it down 
with tears in my eyes, could smile through those tears at any little 
cross I had to bear for my dear Master's sake. What it has done 
for me 1 am sure it will do for thousands, and therefore I have 
ventured to tell you how God has blessed it to me. 

" May He strengthen and bless you in your noble endeavors to 
glorify Him and benefit your race is the sincere prayer of one who 
has been much benefited by your writings. 

"Yours most faithfully, 

"John S. B. Monsell. 

" (Vicar of Egham.)" 



282 Charles Kings ley. 

The answer is characteristic : — 

EvERSLEY, April 2, 1858. 
<' My Dear Sir, 

" Your letter gave me the most lively pleasure, and all the 
more lively, because it came from you, whose spiritual poems have 
been a delight and comfort in a time of anxiety to my dear wife. 

" Would to God that I could be the persons that 1 can conceive. 
If you wish to pray against a burden and temptation, pray against 
that awful gift (for it is a purely involuntary gift) of imagination, 
which alternately flatters and torments its possessor, — flatters him 
by making him fancy that he possesses the virtues which he can 
imagine in others ; torments him, because it makes him feel in him- 
self a capacity for every imaginable form of vice. Yet if it be a 
gift of God's (and it cannot be a gift of the devil's) it must bring 
some good, and perhaps the good is the capacity for sympathy 
Avith blackguards, ' publicans and sinners,' as we now euphemize 
them in sermons, trying, as usual, to avoid the tremendous mean- 
ing of the words by borrowing from an old English translation. 
To see into the inner life of these ; to know their disease, not from 
books, but from inward and scientific anatomy, imagination may 
help a man. If it does that for me I. shall not regret it ; though it 
is, selfishly speaking, the most humiliating and tormenting of all 
talents. 

" God be with you and yours, 

" C. KiNGSLEY." 

TO REV. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, 

EvERSLEY, April 10, 1858, 
*' My Dear Stanley, — 

" I must write and tell you the perfect pleasure with which I 
have read your three lectures on Ecclesiastical History, which that 
excellent fellow, Edward Egerton, lent me. 

'' It is a comfort in this dreary world to read anything so rational 
and fair, so genial and human ; and if those Oxford youths are 
not the better men for such talk, they deserve the pool of Hela. 

" What you say about learning ecclesiastical history by biography 
is most true. I owe all I really know about the history of Christi- 
anity (ante Tridentine), to thumbing and re-thumbing a copy of 
' Surius' Actse Sanctorum.' In that book I found out for the first 
time in my life ' what they were all about,' But you have, from 
your greater knowledge, and wider view, a spirit of hope about it 
all, which sadly fails me at times ; and therefore your lectures 
have done me good ; and I thank you for them, as for personal 
and private consolation which I sorely wanted. God bless you 
and prosper you and your words," 



Sunday Aiimsements. 283 

Among the many pleasant friendships formed at this time, which 
sprung out of the Eversley Church services, was that of Captain 
Congreve, who thus recalls those Sundays : — 

" It was in the spring of 1858 that Capt., now Colonel, Jebb, of 
the 67th, and I first began to go to Eversley Church. We used to 
walk over on Sunday mornings after breakfast, and then have 
some bread and cheese at the little public house in the village after 
church. 

" There we discussed with our host, the parson and the village 
generally, and I remember his amusing us very much once, when 
referring to some cricket to be played in the afternoon, by saying, 
'Eh, Faason, he doan't objec' — not ee — as loik as not 'e'll coom 
and look on, and ee do tell '-em as its a deal better to 'ave a bit 
o' elthy play o' a Sunday evenin' than to be a-larkin' 'ere and 
a-larkin there hall hover the place a-courtin' and a-drinkin' hale.' 

"Mr. Kingsley soon observed the two new faces in his church, 
and spoke to us one Sunday after service. From that time I think 
we were pretty constant guests at your Sunday luncheon-table. 1 
shall never forget the genial, happy, unreserved intercourse of 
those Sunday afternoons, and I never strolled home to mess with- 
out feeUng that I had come away wiser and better from the con- 
tact with that clear and kindly mind. He essentially loved men 
and manly pursuits, and perhaps liked soldiers, as being a class 
among whom manly feeling and many virtues were cultivated. 

" The Staff College was then in its infancy, and had perhaps 
gathered together a few of the best educated, hardest working, and 
most ambitious young men in the service. 

" Mr. Kingsley was very soon a welcome and an honored guest 
at our mess. He entered into our studies, popularised our geol- 
ogy, and was an able critic on questions of military history. Not 
only that, however, — head work needs physical relaxation. He 
told us the best meets of the hounds, the nearest cut to the cover, 
the best trout streams, and the home of the largest pike. Many 
an hour have I spent pleasantly and profitably on the College 
lakes with him. Every fly that lit on the boat-side, every bit of 
weed that we fished up, every note of wood-bird, was suggestive of 
some pretty bit of information on the habits, and growth, and 
breeding of the thousand unnoticed forms of hfe around. 

" Yours truly, 

" W. Congreve." 

His youngest son, Grenville Arthur, for whom, in the course of 
time, "The Waterbabies " and "Madame How" were written, 
was born this spring, and named after his godfather. Dean Stanley, 



284 Charles Kingsley. 

and Sir Richard Grenvil, one of the heroes of "Westward Ho !" 
from whom Mrs. Kingsley's family claimed descent. 

A new novel was now projected on the subject of the Pilgrimage 
of Grace, which made it necessary for him to go into Yorkshire for 
a few days to identify places and names. This was his only holi- 
day for the year, and thanks to the kindness of his friend, Mr. (now 
the Rt. Hon.) E. Forster, and Mr. Morrison, of Malham, it was a 
very charming one, combining antiquities, manufactures, scenery, 
and fishing, with the facts he had to make out. The novel was 
partly written, but never finished. 

BuRLEY, Wharfside, July, 1858. 

" At a most delicious place, and enjoying good society and a 
good library, with some very valuable books. . . . . Tell 
the children I have just seen — oh ! I don't know what I hav'nt 
seen — the largest water-wheel in England, making light summer 
over-coats for the Yankees and Germans. I am in a state of 
bewilderment — such machinery as no tongue can describe, about 
three acres of mills and a whole village of people, looking healthy, 
rosy, and happy ; such a charming half-time school for the children, 
library for the men, &c. Tell R. I saw the wool as it came off 
the sheep's back in Leicestershire, followed it till it was turned 
into an 'alpaca' coat, and I don't care to see conjuring or magic 
after that. The country is glorious '* 

" We had a delighftul day at Bolton yesterday, and saw the Abbey. 
Tell R. I jumped over the Strid where young Romilly was drowned. 
Make her learn Wordsworth's ballad on it, ' What is good for a 
bootless bene' ? " 

After his return home a lady of an old Roman Catholic family 
sent him through a mutual friend some curious facts for his book, 
but expressed her fears that his strong Protestant sympathies would 
prevent his doing justice to her co-religionists. He thus acknowl- 
edges her help in a letter to Mr. C. Kegan Paul : — 

. EvERSLEY, October, 1858. 

" Will you thank Mrs. * * * * most heartily from me for all she has 
found out for me. The Merlin's prophecy about Aske is invaluable. 
The Miltons I don't know of, and would gladly know. The York 
documents about the Pilgrimage of Grace have got, I hear, to 
Durham, at least there are none to be found in the Chapter Library 
at York. 



yustice to the Catholics. 285 

" But let her understand — if it be any comfort to her — that I shall 
in this book do the northern Catholics ample justice ; that Robert 
and Christopher Aske, both good Romanists, are my heroes, and 
Robert the Rebel my special hero. I can't withdraw what I said 
in ' Westward Ho,' because it is true. Romanism under the Jesuits 
became a different thing from what it had been before. Of course 
Mrs. * * * * does not know that, and why should she ? 

" But I fear she will be as angry as ever, though really she is 
most merciful and liberal, at my treatment of the monks. I love 
the old Catholic Laity : I did full justice to their behavior at the 
Armida juncture; but I know too much of those shavelings, and 
the worst is, I know, as Wolsey knew, and every one knew, things 
one dare'nt tell the world, much less a woman. So judgment must 
go by default, as I cannot plead, for decency's sake. Stilt, tell her 
that had I been born and bred a Yorkshire Catholic, I should 
probably — unless I had been a coward — have fought to the last 
drop at Robert Aske's side. But this philosophy only gives one a 
habit of feeling for every one, without feeling with them, and I can 
now love Robert Aske, though I think him as wrong as man can be, 
who is a good man and true." 



CHAPTER XIX. 
1859. 

Aged 40. 

Sanitary Work — First Sermon at Buckingham Palace — Queen's Chaplaincy — 
First Visit to Windsor — Letter to an Atheist — Correspondence with Artists — 
Charles Bennett — Ladies' Sanitary Association — Letter from John Stuart 
Mill. 

As years went on he devoted time, thought, and influence more and 
more to Sanitary science ; the laws of health, and the enfranchise- 
ment of men's bodies from disease and dirt, and their inevitable 
consequences of sin, misery, and physical if not spiritual death, 
became more important in his eyes than any Political reforms. He 
lectured at the different institutes in the diocese of Winchester on 
the laws of health, rather than on literary and scientific matters, 
and attended the first public meeting in Willis's Rooms of the 
Ladies' National Sanitary Association, where he made a speech 
that was afterwards published under the title of " The Massacre of 
the Innocents." 

This year, 1859, '^^^^ ^^"^ altogether important one to him. On 
Palm Sunday he preaclied for the first time before the Queen and 
the Prinee Consort at Buckingham Palace, and was shortly after- 
wards made one of Her Majesty's chaplains in ordinary. He now 
took his turn as Queen's Chaplain in the services at the Chapel 
Royal, St. James's, and preached in the autumn before the Court 
in the private chapel at Windsor Castle. On this occasion he had 
the honor of being presented to the Queen and the Prince Consort, 
and to the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, then staying at 
Windsor, and from that hour to his dying day he received marks of 
Royal kindness and condescension, the memory of which will be an 
heirloom to his children. To a man of his fine imagination and 
deep loyalty, who had sounded the depths of society, and whose 
increasing popularity as an author, and power as a preacher, had 
given him a large acquaintance with all ranks, this new phase in 



Marriage of Max Muller. 287 

his life seemed to come just to complete the cycle of his experi- 
ences. Bat while its result was, in a certain sense, to estabUsh his 
position and enlarge his influence, on his own character it had a 
humbling rather than exalting effect. From this time there was a 
marked difference in the tone of the public press, religious and 
otherwise, towards him : and though he still waged war as hereto- 
fore against bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance, and was himself 
unchanged, the attacks on him from outside were less frequent and 
less bitter. 

The events of this year, uninteresting to the outside world, but 
each important to himself in giving color to his daily life and leav- 
ing its own mark on his heart and imagination, are soon told. 
He sent his eldest son to Wellington College, which had opened in 
the winter, and where the scheme of education, due much to the 
wise influence of the Prince Consort, was more consonant to his 
own views for his son, being of a wider and more modern character 
than that of the older and more venerable public schools. He was 
present at the marriage of his friend Max Muller and a beloved 
niece,* who spent the first week of their married life at P>ersley 
Rectory; and he preached them their wedding sermon, giving them 
their first communion in his own church. Dean Stanley (then 
Canon of Christ Church, Oxford) paid his first visit to Eversley. 
His acquaintance with Lord Cranworth and with Lord Carnarvon, 
to whom he became more and more attached as time went on, was 
made this year. In the autumn, with his wife, he spent a few days 
with Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson in the Isle of Wight, but having no 
curate, his holiday was short, and more than once he broke down 
from overwork ; the excitement too of the Sundays, and his full 
cliurch, overpowered him. He shrunk from the bustle of London, 
refused all sermons there, and withdrew from politics. 

" I have not been to town," he said, "for more than two days in 
the last nine months. I see no chance of preaching there, 1 am 
liappy to say, for a long time, save next Sunday, when 1 preach to 
the Queen. As for politics, I heed them not. The only i)olitician 
now living is the Lord of all ; and He has principle and principles ; 

* The G. to whom the lines were written beginning — 
" A hasty jest I once let fall, 
As jests are wont to be, untrue." — To G., "Poems," p. 236. 



288 Charles Kingsley. 

whoever has not. It is a fearful lookout when God has to govern 
a nation because it cannot govern itself. ....", 

Notwithstanding fair prospects and outward distinction, he clung 
more and more passionately to his country home — the "far off 
look," and longing for rest and reality, and for the unfolding of 
the mystery of life grew stronger upon him, and he said more fre- 
quently to his wife " How blessed it will be when it is all over ! " 
With his children, however, he was always bright and merry. To 
his friend, Mr. Tom Hughes, he writes this summer, on the 12th 
of June : — 

" This is my fortieth birthday. What a long life I have lived ! 
and silly fellows that review me say that I can never have known 
ill-health or sorrow. I have known enough to make me feel very 
old — happy as I am now ; and I am very happy " 

A correspondence with an intelligent artizan, an avowed atheist, 
and editor of an atheist newspaper in one of the manufacturing 
towns in the north, is unfortunately lost, with the exception of Mr. 
Kingsley's last letter, in answer to one telling him that his corre- 
spondent had in common with his class read " Alton Locke," 
" Yeast," and " Hypatia," with interest, from " their freshness of 
thought and honesty, which seemed to place them above the fac- 
tions of creed, while breathing the same spirit of Christian kind- 
ness which Fenelon and Dr. Arnold practised." " Such perusal," 
he added, " makes us better men." 

EvERSLEY, January 15, 1859. 
" My Dear Sir, 

" I should have answered so frank and manly a letter before, 
but my father's sudden and severe illness called me away from 
home. I hope that you and your friends will not always remain 
Atheists. . . . It is a barren, heartless, hopeless creed, as a 
creed — though a man may live long in it without being heartless 
or hopeless himself. Still, he will never be the man he ought to 
have been ; and therefore it is bad for him and not good. But 
what I want to say to you is this, and I do want to say it. What- 
ever doubt or doctrinal Atheism you and your friends may have, 
don't fall into moral Atheism. Don't forget the Eternal Goodness, 
whatever name you may call it. I call it God. Or if you even 
deny an Eternal Goodness, don't forget or neglect such goodness 
as you find in yourselves— not an honest, a manly, a loving, a 



An Illustrated Pilgrini s Progress. 289 

generous, a patient feeling. For your own sakes, if not for God's 
sake, keep alive in you the sense of what is, and you know to be, 
good, noble, and beautiful. I don't mean beautiful in 'art,' but 
beautiful in morals. If you will keep that moral sense — that sense 
of the beauty of goodness, and of man's absolute duty to be good, 
then all will be as God wills, and all will come right at last. But 
if you lose that — if you begin to say, ' Why should not I be quar- 
relsome and revengeful ? why should I not be conceited and inso- 
lent ? why should 1 not be selfish and grasping ? then you will be 
Atheists indeed, and what to say to you 1 shall not know. But 
from your letter, and from the very look of your handwriting, I 
augur better things ; and even hope that you will not think me im- 
pertinent if I send you a volume of my own Sermons to think over 
manfully and fairly. It seems to me (but I may flatter myself) 
that you cannot like, as you say you do, my books, and yet be 
what I call moral Atheists. 

" Mind, if there is anything in this letter which offends you, don't 
take fire, but write and ask me (if you think it worth while) what I 
mean. In looking it through I see several things which (owing to 
the perversion of religious phrases in these days) you may mis- 
understand, and take your friend for your foe. 

" At all events, I am, yours faithfully, 

"Charles Kingsley." 

Artists now often consulted him, and among them Charles Henry 
Bennett, a man full of genius, then struggling with poverty and the 
needs of a large young family, who began by illustrating children's 
books, then went on the staff of " Punch," and died a few years 
since, greatly regretted. His letters, followed by a visit to Evers- 
ley, led to Mr, Kingsley's offering to write him a preface to an 
Illustrated Pilgrim's Progress, for which he had some difficulty in 
getting a publisher, but on this offer Messrs. Longman undertook 
to bring out the work at once. 

TO CHARLES H. BENNETT, ESQ. 

EVERSLEY, January 23, 1859. 
_ " . . . I feel as deeply as you our want of a fitting illustra- 
tion of the great Puritan Epic, and agree in every word which you 
say about past attempts. Your own plan is certainly the right one, 
only in trying for imaginative freedom, do not lose sight of beauty 
of foini. I am, in taste, a strong classicist, contrary to the reign- 
ing school of Ruskin, Pugin, and the pre-Raphaelites, and wait 
quietly for the world to come round to me again. But it is per- 
fectly possible to combine Greek health and accuracy of form, with 
19 



290 Charles Kings ley. 

German freedom of imagination, even with German grotesqueness. 
I say Greek and German {i.e., fifteenth and sixteenth century 
German) because those two are the only two root-schools in the 
world. I know no such combination of both as in Kaulbach. His 
illustrations of Reinecke Fuchs are in my eyes the finest designs 
(save those of three or four great Italians of the sixteenth century), 
which the world has ever seen. Any man desiring to do an endur- 
ing work, must study, copy, and surpass them. 

" Now in Bunyan there is a strong German (Albert Durer) ele- 
ment which you must express, viz., ist, a tendency to the gro- 
tesque in imagination ; 2nd, a tendency to spiritual portraiture of 
the highest kind, in which an ideal character is brought out, not by 
abstracting all individual traits (the Academy plan), but by throw- 
ing in strong individual traits drawn from common life. This, in- 
deed, has been the manner of the highest masters, both in poetry 
and painting, e.g., Shakespeare and Dante, and the portraits, and 
even heroic figures of Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Sebas- 
tian del Piombo, Bronzino, the two latter with Titian, the triumvi- 
rate of portrait-painting. You find the same in Correggio. He 
never idealises, i.e., abstracts in a portrait, seldom in any place. 
You would know the glorious ' Venus ' of the National Gallery if 
you met her in the street. So this element you have a full right to 
employ. 

" But there is another, of which Bunyan, as a Puritan tinker, 
was not conscious, though he had it in his heart, that is, classic 
grace and purity of form. He had it in his heart, as much as 
Spenser. His women, his Mr. Greatheart, his Faithful, his shep- 
herds, can only be truly represented in a lofty and delicate outline, 
otherwise the ideal beauty which lifts them into a supernatural and 
eternal world is lost, and they become mere good folks of the seven- 
teenth century. Some illustrators, feeling this, have tried to me- 
dievalize them — silly fellows. What has Bunyan to do with the 
Middle Age ? He writes for all ages, he is full of an eternal 
humanity, and that eternal humanity can only be represented by 
something of the eternal form which you find in Greek statues. I 
don't mean that you are to Grecianize their dress, any more than 
niedievalize it. No. And here comes an important question. 

" Truly to illustrate a poem, you must put the visions on paper 
as they appeared to the mind of the seer himself Now we know 
that Bunyan saw these people in his mind's eye, as dressed in the 
garb of his own century. It is very graceful, and I should keep to 
it, not only for historic truth's sake, but because in no other way 
can you express Bunyan' s leading idea, that the same supernatural 
world which was close to old prophets and ma.rtyrs, was close to . 
him ; that the devil who whispered in the ears of Judas, whispered 
in the ears of a cavalier over his dice, or a Presbyterian minister in 
his Geneva gown. Take these hints as meant, kindly." 



Illustrati?tg Pilgi-ims Progress. 291 

St. Leonard's, April i, 1859. 

" I saw Longman the other day hunting his hounds,- and we had 
a talk about you and the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' 1 shall be ready for 
you some time this summer. Do you know the old cuts of the 
' Pelerinage de I'homme,' from which Bunyan took his idea ? They 
have been lately republished. I will show them to you when you 
come down to me. 

" I like your heads well. I really have had no time to write to 
you before, having been half insane with parish work and confirma- 
tion classes. I think Mr. Worldly Wiseman excellent, and ' the 
Lust of the Eye,' ditto. ' Mr. Grij^eman ' is too handsome. I 
think you want a more sharp, comprest, and cruel lip. But the 
general shape of the face is good. It is very like Alva, who was a 
cruel man, and a rigid pedant. 

'' I think you must have more smirk about Smoothman's face ; 
and should certainly shave him, all but a very neat little imperial. 
The ' Lust of the Flesh,' is hardly animal enough. I have gene- 
rally seen with strong animal passion, a tendency to high cheek- 
bone ; but only in a dark woman. Yours may stand for a blonde 
type ; but even then I should prefer a lower forehead. I should 
take the 'Pride of Life' for an older woman, and a much stouter 
one. Give her very full features and bust. As it is, your ' Pride 
of Life ' has more animal passion than the ' Lust of the Flesh ; ' in- 
deed, beyond that of vacuity, she has not much. She would be 
gad-about and vain enough, but not pompous and magnificent. 
Besides, she is a low type, and you should have the highest you 
can get. You see I criticise freely. I liked your ' Vanity Fair ' 
sketches (in words) very much. Embody them in lines, and you 
will indeed do well. Do you know Walker's 'Analysis of Female 
Beauty?' It is a valuable book, and has much which would help 
any man." 

In July Mr. Kingsley attended the first meeting of the Ladies' 
Sanitary Association at Willis's Rooms, and made the following re- 
markable speech : — 

" Let me say one thing to the ladies who are interested in this 
matter. Have they really seriously considered what they are 
about to do in carrying out their own plans ? Are they aware that 
if their Society really succeeds they will produce a very serious, 
some would think a very dangerous, change in the state of this 
nation ? Are they aware that they would probably save the lives 
of some thirty or forty per cent, of the children who are born in 
England, and that therefore they would cause the subjects of 
Queen Victoria to increase at a very far more rapid rate than they 
do now ? And are they aware that some very wise men inform us 



292 Charles Kings ley. 

that England is already over-peopled, and that it is an exceedingly- 
puzzling question where we shall soon be able to find work or food 
for our masses, so rapidly do they increase already, in spite of the 
thirty or forty per cent, kind Nature carries off yearly before they 
are five years old ? Have they considered what they are to do 
with all those children whom they are going to save alive ? That 
has to be thought of; and if they really do believe, with political 
economists now, that over-population is a possibility to a country 
which has the greatest colonial empire that the world has ever 
seen, then I think they had better stop in their course and let the 
children die, as they have been dying. 

" But if, on the other hand, it seems to them, as I confess it does 
to me, that the most precious thing in the world is a human being, 
that the lowest, and poorest, and most degraded of human beings 
is better than all the dumb animals in the world ; that there is an 
infinite, priceless capability in that creature, degraded as it may be 
— a capability of virtue, and of social and industrial use, which, if 
it is taken in time, may be developed up to a pitch, of which at 
first sight the child gives no hint whatsoever ; if they believe 
again, that of all races upon earth now, probably the English race 
is the finest, and that it gives not the slightest sign whatever 
of exhaustion ; that it seems to be on the whole a young race, and to 
have very great capabilities in it which have not yet been developed, 
and above all, the most marvellous capability of adapting itself to 
every sort of climate, and every form of life that any nation, except 
the old Roman, ever had in the world : if they consider with me 
that it is worth the while of political economists and social philos- 
ophers to look at the map, and see that about four-fifths of the 
globe cannot be said as yet to be in anywise inhabitated or culti- 
vated, or in the state in which men could make it, by any fair sup- 
ply of pojnilation and industry and human intellect : — then, 
perhaps, they may think with me that it is a duty, one of the 
noblest of duties, to help the increase of the English race as much 
as possible, and to see that every child that is born into this great 
nation of England be developed to the highest pitch to which we 
can develop him, in physical strength and in beauty, as Avell as in 
intellect and in virtue.' And then, in that light, it does seem to 
me, that this Association — small now, but 1 do hope some day to 
become great, and to become the mother Association of many and 
valuable children — is one of the noblest, most right-minded, 
straight-forward, and p-ractical conceptions that I have come 
across for some years. 

" We all know the difficulties of Sanitary Legislation. One 
looks at them at times almost with despair. I have my own rea- 
sons, with which I will not trouble this meeting, for looking on 
them with more despair tlian ever ; not on account of the govern- 
ment of the time, or any possible government that could come to 



Women and Sajtitary Reform. 293 

England, but on account of the peculiar class of persons in whom 
the ownership of the small houses has become more and more 
vested, and who are becoming more and more, I had almost said, 
the arbiters of the popular opinion, and of every election of parlia- 
ment. However, that is no business of mine here ; that must be 
settled somewhere else : and a fearfully long time, it seems to me, 
it will be before it is settled. But, in the mean time, what legisla- 
tion cannot do, I believe private help, and, above all, woman's 
help, can do even better. It can do this ; it can not only improve 
the condition of the working-man ; I am not speaking of working- 
men just at this time, I am speaking of the middle classes, of the 
man who owns the house in which the working-man lives. I am 
speaking, too, of the wealthy tradesman ; I am speaking, it is a sad 
thing to have to say, of our own class as well as of others. Sani- 
tary Reform, as it is called, or, in plain English, the art of health, 
is so very recent a discovery, as all true physical science is, that 
we ourselves and our own class know very little about it, and prac- 
tice it veiy ill. And this Society, I do hope, will bear in mind 
that it is not simply to affect the working-man, not only to go into 
the foul alley ; but it is to go to the door of the farmer, to the door 
of the shopkeeper, aye, to the door of ladies and gentlemen of the 
same rank as ourselves. Women can do in that work what men 
cannot do. Private correspondence, private conversation, private 
example, may do what no legislation can do. I am struck more 
and more with the amount of disease and death I see around me 
in all classes, which no sanitary legislation whatsoever could touch, 
unless you had a complete house-to-house visitation of a govern- 
ment officer, with powers to enter every house, to drain and venti- 
late it, and not only that, but to regulate the clothes and the diet of 
every inhabitant, and that among all ranks. I can conceive of 
nothing short of that, which would be absurd and impossible and 
most harmful, which would stop the present amount of disease and 
death which I see around me, Avithout some such private exertion 
on the part of women, above all of mothers, as 1 do hope will 
spring from this Institution more and more. 

" I see this, that three persons out of four are utterly unaware 
of the general causes of their own ill health, and of the ill health 
of their children. They talk of their ' afflictions,' and their ' mis- 
fortunes ; ' and, if they be pious people, they talk of ' the will of 
Ood,' and of ' the visitation of God.' I do not like to trench upon 
those matters, but when I read in my Book and in your Book that 
' it is not the will of our Father in heaven that one of these little 
ones should perish,' it has come to my mind sometimes with very 
great strength, that that may have a physical appUcation as well as 
a spiritual one, and that the Father in heaven who does not wish 
the child's soul to die may possibly have created that child's body 
for the purpose of its not dying except in a good old age. Not 



294 Charles Kings ley. 

only in the lower class, but in the middle class, when one sees an 
unhealthy family, then in three cases out of four, if one takes time, 
trouble, and care enough, one can, with the help of the doctor who 
has been attending them, run the evil home to a very different 
cause than the will of God ; and that is, to a stupid neglect, a 
stupid ignorance, or what is just as bad, a stupid indulgence. 

" Now, I do believe that if those tracts which you are publish- 
ing, which 1 have read, and of which I cannot speak too highly, 
are spread over the length and breadth of the land, and if women, 
clergymen's wives, the wives of manufacturers and of great em- 
ployers, district visitors and school mistresses, have these books 
put into their hands, and are persuaded to spread them, and to 
enforce them, by their own example and by their own counsel, 
then in the course of a few years, this system being thoroughly 
carried out, you would see a sensible and large increase in the rate 
of population. 

" VVhen you have saved your children alive, then you must settle 
what to do with them. But a hving dog is better than a dead 
lion ; I would rather have the living child, and let it take its 
chance, than let it return to God — wasted. Oh ! it is a distressing 
thing to see children die. God gives the most beautiful and 
precious thing that earth can have, and we just take it and cast it 
away ; we cast our pearls upon the dunghill, and leave them. A 
dying child is to me one of the most dreadful sights in the world. 
A dying man, a man dying on the field of battle, that is a small 
sight ; he has taken his chance ; he has had his excitement, he 
has had his glory, if that will be any consolation to him ; if he is a 
wise man, he has the feeling that he is doing his duty by his coun- 
try, or by his King, or by his Queen. It does not horrify or shock 
me to see a man dying in a good old age, even though it be pain- 
ful at the last, as it too often is. But it does shock me, it does 
make me feel that the world is indeed out of joint, to see a child 
die. I believe it to be a priceless boon to the child to have lived 
for a week, or a. day ; but oh, what has God given to this thank- 
less earth, and what has the earth thrown away, in nine cases out 
of ten, from its own neglect and carelessness ? What that boy 
might have been, what he might have done as an Englishman, if 
he could have lived and grown up healthy and strong ! I entreat 
you to bear this in mind, that it is not as if our lower classes or our 
micidle classes were not worth saving ; bear in mind that the physi- 
cal beauty and strength and intellectual power of the middle 
classes, — the shopkeeping class, the farming class, the working 
class — whenever you give them a fair chance, whenever you give 
them fair food and air, and physical education of any kind, prove 
them to be the finest race in Europe. Not merely the aristocracy, 
splendid race as they are : but down and down and down to the 
lowest laboring man, to the navigator ; — why there is not such a 



Wasted Lives. 295 

body of men in Europe as our navigators, and no body of men 
perhaps have had a worse chance of growing to be what they are ; 
and yet see what they have done. See the magnificent men they 
become in spite of all that is against them, all that is drawing them 
back, all that is tending to give them rickets and consumption, and 
all the miserable diseases which children contract ; see what men 
they are, and then conceive what they might be. 

" It has been said, again, that there are no more beautiful races 
of women in Europe than the wives and daughters of our London 
shopkeepers, and yet there are few races of people who lead a life 
more in opposition to all rules of hygiene. But in spite of all that, 
so wonderful is the vitality of the English race, that they are what 
they are ; and therefore we have the finest material to work upon 
that people evef had. And therefore, again, we have the less 
excuse if we do allow Enghsh people to grow up puny, stunted, 
and diseased. 

" Let me refer again to that word that I used : death — the 
amount of death. I really believe there are hundreds of good and 
kind people who would take up this subject with their whole heart 
and soul if they were aware of the magnitude of the evil. Lord 
Shaftesbury told you just now that there were one hundred thou- 
sand preventable deaths in England every )'^ear. So it is. We 
talk of the loss of human life in war. We are the fools of smoke 
and noise ; because there are cannon-balls and gunpowder, and 
red coats, and because it costs a great deal of money, and makes a 
great deal of noise in the papers, we think, What so terrible as 
war ? I will tell you what is ten times, and ten thousand times, 
more terrible than war, and that is — outraged nature. War, we 
are discovering now, is the clumsiest and most expensive of all 
games ; we are finding that if you wish to commit an act of 
cruelty or folly, the most expensive act that you can commit is to 
contrive to shoot your fellow-men in war. So it seems ; but Na- 
ture, insidious, inexpensive, silent, sends no roar of cannon, no 
glitter of arms to do her work ; she gives no warning note of 
preparation ; she has no protocol, nor any diplomatic advances, 
whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. Silently, I say, 
and insidiously she goes forth ; no — she does not even go forth, 
she does not step out of her path, but quietly, by the very same 
laws by which she makes alive, she puts to death. By the very 
same laws by which every blade of grass grows, and every insect 
springs to life in the sunbeam, she kills, and kills, and kills, and is 
never tired of killing, till she has taught man the terrible lesson he 
is so slow to learn, that nature is only conquered by obeying her. 

"And bear in mind one thing more. Man has his courtesies of 
war, and his chivalries of war : he does not strike the unarmed 
inan ; he spares the woman and the child. But Nature is fierce 
when she is offended, as she is bounteous and kind when she is 



296 Charles Kings ley. 

obeyed. She spares neither woman nor child. She has no pity : 
for some awful, but most good reason, she is not allowed to have 
any pity. Silently she strikes the slee|)ing child, with as little 
remorse as she would strike the strong man, with the musket or 
the pickaxe in his hand. Ah, would to God that some man had 
the pictorial eloquence to put before the mothers of England the 
mass of preventable suffering, the mass of preventable agony of 
mind and body, which exists in England year after year ! And 
would that some man had the logical eloquence to make 
them understand that it is in their power, in the power of the 
mothers and wives of the higher class, I will not say to stop it 
all, — God only knows that, — but to stop, as I believe, three- 
fourths of it. 

" It is in the power, I believe, of an)^ woman«in this room to 
save three or four lives, human lives, during the next six months. 
It is in your power, ladies, and it is so easy. You might save 
several lives apiece, if you choose, without, I believe, interfering 
with your daily business, or with your daily pleasure, or, if you 
choose, with your daily frivolities, in any way whatsoever. Let me 
ask, then, those who are here, and who have not yet laid these 
things to heart : Will you let this meeting to-day be a mere pass- 
ing matter of two or three hours' interest, which you shall go away 
and forget for the next book or the next amusement ? Or will 
you be in earnest ? Will you learn — I say it openly — from the 
noble chairman*, how easy it is to be earnest in life ; how every 
one of you, amid all the artificial complications of English society 
in the nineteenth century, can find a work to do, and a noble 
work to do, chivalrous work to do, — just as chivalrous as if you 
lived in any old fairy land, such as Spenser talked of in his ' Faery 
Queen ; ' how you can be as true a knight-errant, or lady-errant in 
the present century, as if you had lived far away in the dark ages 
of violence and rapine ? Will you, I ask, learn this ? Will you 
learn to be in earnest, and use the position, and the station, and 
the talent that God has given you, to save alive those who should 
live ? And will you remember that it is not the will of your 
Father that is in heaven that one little one that plays in the kennel 
outside should perish, either in body or in soul ? " 

Mr. Kingsley's work was incessant, and the letters now printed 
give a most inadequate idea of the labor of his life, of the calls on his 
sympathy, and of the different attitudes in v/hich he had to put his 
mind according to the variety of subjects on which he was asked 
for counsel, or called upon to do battle ; but as Bishop Forbes 



* The Eaii of Shaftesbury. 



Letter from John Stuart Mill. 297 

beautifully says of Professor James D. Forbes in words which truly 
picture Mr. Kingsley, especially in the concluding sentence, 

" I never saw in any man such fearlessness in the path of duty. 
The one question with him was ' Is it right ? ' No dread of con- 
sequences, and consequences often bitterly felt by him, and wound- 
ing his sensitive nature, ever prevented him from doing that to 
which conscience prompted. His sense of right amounted to 
chivalry." 

But he seldom returned from speech or lecture without showing 
that so much life had actually gone out of him — not only from the 
strain of brain and heart, but from the painful sense of antagonism 
which his startling mode of stating things called out in his hearers, 
and of which he was keenly conscious at the time. 

The following letter from Mr. Mill was in answer to one from 
Mr. Kingsley thanking him for the gift of his " Dissertations and 
Discussions," and also for the work on " Liberty," which he says, 
" affected me in making me a clearer-headed, braver-minded man 
on the spot." 

MR. JOHN STUART MILL TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, 

Saint Veren, near Avignon, Atig. 6, 1859. 

" Your letter of July 5 reached me long after its date, while 
wandering in search of health in the Pyrenees. Allow me, while 
expressing the great pleasure it gave me, to say that its humility, as 
it respects yourself, seems to me as much beyond the mark as tlie 
deference expressed towards me exceeds anything I have the 
smallest title to. 

'■'■ Laudari a laudato^ or by any other viro^ has never been very 
much of an object with me. But to be told by a man who is him- 
self one of the good influences of the age, and whose sincerity I 
cannot doubt, that anything 1 have written makes him feel able to 
be a still better influence, is both an encouragement and a reward 
— the greatest 1 can look for, now that a still greater has been 
taken from me by death. 

" Far from having read none of your books, I have read them 
nearly all, and hope to read all of them. I have found in them an 
earnest endeavor towards many of the objects I myself have at 
heart ; and even when I differed from you it has never been with- 
out great interest and sympathy. There are few men between 
whom and myself any nearer approximation in opinion could be 
more agreeable to me, and that you should look forward to it gives 
me a pleasure I could not forbear to express." 



298 Charles Kings ley. 

TO FREDERIC SHIELDS, ESQ. 

EVERSLEY, Nov. 29, 1859. 

''Your letter is sensible and pertinent to the matter in hand, 
and I tell you at once what I can. I think that you much over- 
rate the disuse of armor in Bunyan's day. When the 'Pilgrim's 
Progress' was written it was much gone out, but in Bunyan's 
boyhood he must have seen everywhere old armor hanging up in 
every gentleman or burgher's house (he would to his dying day), 
which had been worn and used by the generation before him. Al- 
lowing, as we must, in every human being for the reverence for 
early impressions, I think his mind would have pictured to him 
simply the Elizabethan and James I.'s armor, which he saw hang- 
ing in all noble houses, and in which he may have, as a boy, seen 
gentlemen joust, for tilting was not extinct in his boyhood. As 
for this co-existing with slop breeches (what we now call knicker- 
bockers are nothing else), I think you will find, as now, that 
country fashions changed slowlier than town. The puffed trunk- 
hose of 1 5 80- 1 600 co-existed with the finest cap-a-pied armor of 
proof. They gradually in the country, where they were ill made, 
became slops, i. e., knickerbockers. By that time almost loose and 
short cavalier breeks had superseded them in the court — but what 
matter? The change is far less than that during 1815-1855. The 
anachronism of putting complete armor by the side of one drest 
as Christian is in the frontispiece of the original edition of the 
' Pilgrim's Progress' is far less than putting you by the side of a 
Life-Guard's officer in 1855 ; far less, again, than putting a clod 
of my parish, drest as he would have been in A. D, iioo, in smock 
frock and leather gaiters, by the side of you or me. Therefore 
use without fear the beautiful armor of the later years of Elizabeth 
and the beginning of James I., and all will be right, and shock 
nobody. As for shields, I should use the same tune. Shields 
were common among serving men in James I. There are several 
in the Tower, fitted with a pistol to be fired from the inside, and a 
long spike. All are round. I believe that ' sword and buckler 
play' was a common thing among the country folk in Bunyan's 
time. Give your man, therefore, a ciicular shield, such as he 
would have seen in his boyhood, or even later, among the retainers 
of noble houses. As for the cruelties practised on Faithful, — for 
the sake of humanity don't talk of that. The Puritans were very 
cruel in the North American colonies ; horribly cruel, though no- 
where else. But in Bunyan's time the pages of Morland, and 
others, show us that in Piedmont, not to mention the Thirty 
Years' War in Germany, horrors were being transacted which no 
pen can describe nor pencil draw. Dear old Oliver Cromwell 
stopped them in Piedmont, when he told the Pope that unless they 
were stopped English cannon should be heard at the gates of the 



Revivals and Revivalists. 299 

Vatican. But no cruelty to man or woman that you dare draw 
can equal what was going on on the Continent from Papist to 
Protestant during Runyan's lifetime. 

'' I have now told you all I can. I am very unwell, and forbid 
to work. Therefore I cannot tell you more, but what I send I 
send with all good wishes to any man who will be true to art and 
to his author." 

TO LORD ROBERT MONTAGU. 

EVERSLEY, July 7, 1859. 

" As to revivals I don't wonder at revivahsts taking to drink. 
Calvinism has become so unreal — so afraid of itself — so apolo- 
getic about its own peculiar doctrines, on which alone it stands, 
that revivals now must be windy flarings up in the socket of the 
dying candle. All revivals of religion which I ever read of, which 
produced a permanent effect, owed their strength to the introduc- 
tion of some new element, derived from the actual modern con- 
sciousness, and explaining some fresh facts in or round man ; e.g., 
the revivals of the Franciscans and Dominicans — those of the 
Reformation and of Wesley. 

" We may see such things ere we die. At present revivals are 
mere threshings of the old chaff, to see if a grain of corn be still 
there." 

TO , ESQ. 

EvERSLEY, March i6, 1859. 

" I wish you would give me the chapter and page in which Swe- 
denborg handles your text (Matt. xxii. 24-28). There are many 
noble and beautiful things in that text-book of his, and I should 
like to see what he makes of so puzzling a passage. It seems to 
me that we must look at it from the stand-point of the Sadducees, 
and therefore of our Lord as condescending to them. It is a 
hideous case in itself. .... I conceive the Jews had no 
higher notion than this of the relation of the sexes. Perhaps no 
eastern people ever had. The conception of a love-match belongs 
to our Teutonic race, and was our heritage (so Tacitus says with 
awe and astonishment) when we were heathens in the German 
forests. You will find nothing of it in Scripture, after the first 
chapter of Genesis, save a glimpse thereof (but only a glimpse) in 
St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. To me, who believe the 
Gospel of St. John, and believe therefore that Jesus Christ, the 
Word of God, was the light and life of my German forefathers, 
as well as of the Jews, there is nothing strange in this. I only 
say, Christ has taught us something about wedlock, which He did 
not teach the Jews ; that He taught it is proved by its fruits, for 



300 Charles Kingsley. 

what has produced more of nobleness, more of practical good, in 
the human race, than the chivalrous idea of wedlock, which our 
Teutonic race holds, and which the Romance or Popish races of 
Europe have never to this day grasped with any firm hold ? 
Therefore all I can say about the text is . . . (about mar- 
riage in the world to come) that it has nought to do with me and 
my wife. I know that if iuimortality is to include in my case 
identity of person, I shall feel to her for ever what I feel now. 
That feeling may be developed in ways which I do not expect ; it 
may have provided for it forms of expression very different from 
any which are among the holiest sacraments of life ; of that I take 
no care. The union I believe to be as eternal as my own soul. 
I have no rule to say in what other pairs of lovers it may or may 
not be eternal. I leave all in the hands of a good God ; and can 
so far trust His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, as to be sure that 
He knew the best method of ])rotesting against the old Jewish 
error (which Popish casuists still formally assert) that the first end 
of marriage is the procreation of children, and thereby laid the 
true foundation for the emancipation of woman. 

" Let neither Swedenborg, nor any other man, argue you out of 
the scientific canon, that to understand the spirit of Scripture, or 
any other words, you must first understand the letter. If the spirit 
is to be found anywhere, it is to be found by putting yourself in the 
place of the fisteners, and seeing what the words would have meant 
to them. Then take that meaning as an instance (possibly a lower 
one) of an universal spiritual law, true for all men, and may God 
give you wisdom for the process of induction by which that law is 
to be discovered." 

The next letter, on the Eternity of Marriage, written some years 
before, may fitly come in here with scattered extracts on the same 
subject. 

" . . . In heaven they neither marry nor are given in mar- 
riage, but are as the angels of God ! — And how are the angels of 
God in heaven ? Is there no love among them ? If the law which 
makes two beings unite themselves, and crave to unite themselves, 
in body, soul, and spirit, be the law of earth — of pure humanity^ 
if, so far from being established by the Fall, this law has been the 
one from which the Fall has made mankind deflect most in every 
possible way ; if the restoration of purity and the restoration of 
this law are synonymous ; if love be of the Spirit — the vastest and 
simplest exercise of will of which we can conceive — then why 
should not this law hold in the spiritual world as well as in the 
natural ? In heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage ; 
but is not marriage the mere approximation to a unity which shall 



Eternity of Marriage. 301 

be perfect in heaven ? Read what Milton says of angels' love in 
Books VI. and VII. and take comfort. What if many have been 
alone on earth ? may they not find their kindred spirit in heaven, 
and be united to it by a tie still deeper than marriage ? And shall 
we not be re-united in heaven by that still deeper tie ? Surely on 
earth God has loved, Christ the Lord has loved — some more than 
others — why should we not do the same in heaven, and yet love 
all? Here the natural body can but strive to express its love — 
its desire of union. Will not one of the properties of the spiritual 
body be, that it will be able to express that which the natural body 
only tries to express ? Is this a sensual view of heaven ? then are 
the two last chapters of the Revelation most sensual. They tell, 
not onl)^ of the perfection of humanity, with all its joys and wishes 
and properties, but of matter ! They tell of trees, and fruit, and 
rivers — of gold and gems, and all beautiful and glorious material 
things. Isaiah tells of beasts and birds and little children in that 
new earth. Who shall say that the number of living beings is filled 
up? Why is heaven to be one vast lazy retrospect ? Why is not 
eternity to have action and change, yet both, like God's, compati- 
ble with rest and immutabihty ? This earth is but one minor planet 
of a minor system : are there no more worlds ? Will there not be 
incident and action springing from these when the fate of this world 
is decided? Has the Evil Spirit touched this alone? Is it not 
self-conceit which makes us think the redemption of this earth the 
one event of eternity? The same feeling (sensuality, which is self- 
love) prompted men of old to fancy that this globe was the centre 
of the universe. 

"These are matters too high for us, therefore we will leave them 
alone ; but is flatly denying their existence and possibility leaving 
them alone ? No ! it is intruding into them more conceitedly, 
insolently, and sensually than speculating on them by the carnal 
understanding — like the Mystics, Platonists, and Gnostics. Calvin 
was a more conceited mystic than Henry More. It is more humble, 
more rational, to believe the possibility of all things than to doubt 
the possibility of one thing. Reason is the deadly fire, not only of 
mysticism and creduhty, but of unbelief and bigotry ! . . . . 

" And what if earthly love seems so delicious that all change in 
it would seem a change for the worse ? Shall we repine ? What 
does reason (and faith, which is reason exercised on the invisible) 
require of us, but to conclude that, if there is change, there will be 
something better there? Here are two truths — 

" ist. Body is that which expresses the spirit to which it is joined ; 
therefore, the more perfectly spiritual the body, the better it will 
express the spirit joined to it. 

" 2nd. The expression of love produces happiness ; therefore, 
the more perfect the expression the greater the happiness ! And, 
therefore, bliss greater than any we can know here awaits us in 



302 Charles Kingsley. 

heaven. And does not the course of nature point to this ? What 
else is the meaning of the gradual increase of love on earth ? What 
else is the meaning of old age ? when the bodily powers die, while 
the love increases. What does that point to, but to a restoration 
of the body when mortality is swallowed up of life ? Is not that 
mortality of the body sent us mercifully by God, to teach us that 
our love is spiritual, and therefore will be able to express itself in any 
state of existence ? to wean our hearts that we may learn to look 
for more perfect bliss in the perfect body ? . . . . Do not 
these thoughts take away from all earthly bliss the poisoning 
thought, ' all this must end ? ' Ay, end ! but only end so gradually 
that we shall not miss it, and the less perfect union on earth shall 
be replaced in heaven by perfect and spiritual bliss and union, in- 
conceivable because perfect ! 

' Do I undervalue earthly bliss ? No ! I enhance it when I 
make it the sacrament of a higher union ! Will not these thoughts 
give more exquisite delight, will it not tear off the thorn from every 
rose and sweeten every nectar cup to perfect security of blessed- 
ness, in this life, to feel that there is more in store for us — that all 
expressions of love here are but dim shadows of a union which shall 
be perfect, if we will but work here, so as to work out our salva- 
tion ! 

" My views of second marriage are peculiar. 1 consider that it 
is allowed for the hardness of men's hearts, but from the beginning 
it was not so, and will not be so, some day, when the might of love 
becomes generally appreciated ! perhaps that will never be, till the 
earth is renewed." 



CHAPTER XX. 

i860. 
Aged 41. 

Professorship of Modern History— Death of his Father and of Mrs. Anthony 
Froude— Planting the Churchyard— Visit to Ireland— First Salmon killed— 
Wet Summer— Sermon on Weather— Letter from Sir Charles Lyell— Corre- 
spondence— Residence in Cambridge— Inaugural Lecture in the Senate House 
— Visits to Barton Hall — Letter from Sir Charles Bunbury. 

The Regius professorship of Modern History at Cambridge had 
not been filled up since the resignation of Sir James Stephen, and 
some of Mr. Kingsley's friends wished to see him in the vacant 
chair. It was mentioned to Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister. 
On the 9th of May he received a letter from Lord Palmerston ask- 
ing him if he was willing to undertake the duties of the post ; he 
accepted with extreme diffidence, and went up to the University in 
the spring to take his M.A. degree, which he had not been able to 
afford as yet. Dr. Whewell, who was then Master of Trinity, re- 
ceived him most kindly. Having been one of those who had dis- 
approved most emphatically of "Alton Locke" when it was first 
published, his generosity on this occasion, and his steady friendship 
from that time up to the date of his own death in 1866, laid the 
new Professor under a deep debt of gratitude. The feelings with 
which he re-visited Cambridge are told in a letter to his wife from 
Trinity Lodge. 

Trinity, Cambridge, May 22, i860. 

" . , . It is like a dream. Most beautiful — and London 
buildings having been the only ones I have seen for years, I am 
struck with the sharpness and richness of the stone work, and the 
exquisite clearness of the atmosj^here. My windows look into 
Trinity Walks — the finest green walks in England, now full of flags 
and tents for a tulip show. I had a pleasant party of men to meet 
me last night. After breakfast I go to Magdalene, then to the 
Senate House ; after luncheon to this flower show, then to dinner 
in hall at Magdalene ; and back as early as I can All 



304 Charles Kingsley. 

this is so very awful and humbling to me. I cannot bear to think 
of my own unworthiness " 

His experience of life this year was new, varied, and often very 
sad. His father, to whom he had ever been the most dutiful and 
devoted son, died early in the winter, and from that hour till her 
death in 1873, the care of his widowed mother was one of his first 
and most nobly fulfilled duties. He writes to his old college friend, 
the Rev. James Montagu, from Chelsea rectory in February : 

" . . . Forgive me for my silence, for I and my brothers are 
now wearily watching my father's death-bed — long and lingering. 
Miserable to see life prolonged when all that makes it worth having 
(physically) is gone, and never to know from day to day whether 
the end is to come in six hours or six weeks. But he is all right 
and safe, and death for him would be a pure and simple blessing. 

" James Montagu, never pray for a long life. Better die in the 
flower of one's age, than go through what I have seen him go 
through in the last few days. I shall come to you at Shoeburyness ; 
but when, God knows." 

The epitaph he wrote over his father's grave in Brompton 
Cemetery speaks his appreciation of that father. 

" Here lies 

All that was mortal 

of 

Charles Kingsley, 

Formerly of Battramsley House, in the New Forest, Hants, 

And lately of St. Luke's Rectory, Chelsea. 

Endowed by God with many noble gifts of mind and body, 

He preserved through all vicissitudes of fortune 

A loving heart and stainless honour ; 

And having won in all his various Cures 

The respect and affection of his people, 

And ruled the Parish of Chelsea well and wisely 

For more than twenty years, 

He died peacefully in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ 

On the 29th of February, i860, 

Aged 78 years, 

With many friends, and not an enemy on earth ; 

Leaving to his children as a precious heritage 

The example of a Gentleman and a Christian," 

To Mr. Maurice he writes — 



The Eversley Churchyard. 305 

Chelsea, March, i860. 

" I have been so hunted backwards and forwards to Eversley 
and hither, upon trying business at both places, that I have not had 
time to thank you for your kind and comforting letter. My poor 
dear mother broke down frightfully for a day or two after the fune- 
ral ; but the necessity of exertion is keeping her up now. is 

here, as a ministering angel, doing everything for her, and we hope 
in a week or two to get her down to her quiet little cottage at 
Eversley, to end her days with us. Ah, Mr. Maurice, such times 
as these bring conviction of sin with them. How every wrong 
word and deed toward that good old man, and every sorrow. I 
caused him, rise up in judgment against one, and how one feels 
that right doing does not atone for wrong doing. I have this com- 
fort, that he died loving me, and satisfied with me and my small suc- 
cess, and happy in his children, as he said again and again. But if 
death — at least the death of a rational human being — be not an 
ugly damnable solecism, even in a good old age, then I know not 
what is. I shall see and hear you, please God, Sunday afternoon. 
Remember me." 

He was called away from Chelsea to be present at the enlarge- 
ment and consecration of his churchyard at Eversley, and to meet 
his bishop (Dr. Sumner), whose coming, as he had never been in 
Eversley before, was a great event. The new ground gave the 
Rector the opportunity of planting the whole with evergreens, for 
it had long been his wish to make his churchyard an arboretum, 
and gradually to gather together rare shrubs and trees, so that it 
should be truly a Gottesacker in a double sense. He writes to 
his wife, then at Chelsea : 

Eversley, March 10. 

" . . .1 can understand your being unhappy leaving us and this 
delicious place again. It does look too blessed for a man to spend 
his life in. I have been making it blessed-er in the last thirty hours, 
with a good will ; for I and B. (his churchwarden) have been work- 
ing with our own hands, as hard as the four men we have got on. 
We have planted all the shrubs in the churchyard. We have grav- 
elled the new path with tine gravel, and edged it with turf; we 
have levelled, delved, planned, and plotted ; and pressed into the 

service that most cockney of good fellows , making him work 

like a horse, in carrying water. M. is trimming up unsightly 
graves, and we shall be all right and ready for the Bishop by 
Monday 

" Altogether I am delighted at the result and feel better, thanks 
to two days' hard work with pick and spade, than I have done for 
20 



3o6 Charles Kings ley. 

a fortnight. So never mind about me. . . . But I cannot bear 
working and planning at improvements without you ; it seems but 
half a life ; and I am leaving everything I can (considering the 
bishop on Monday) to be done after you come back. Oh ! when 
shall we settle down here in peace and see the spring come on ? 
Patience, though. — It wants three weeks to spring, and we may, by 
God's blessing, get back here in time to see the spring unfold 
around us, and all mend and thrive. After all, how few troubles 
we have ! for God gives with one hand, if He takes away with the 

other I found a new competitor for the corner of the 

new ground, just under our great fir tree, which I had always 
marked out for you and ine, in dear old Bannister (his churchwar- 
den, a farmer), who had been telling M. that he wanted to be 
buried close to me. So I have kept a corner for ourselves ; and 

then he comes at our feet, and by our side insists on lying. 

Be it so. If we could see the children grown up, and the History * 
written, what do I need, or you either below?" 

The vacant space by the side of his own proposed grave was 
soon to have a tenant he little dreamt of, for in the spring an- 
other heavy sorrow came — and one to whom he had been more 
than a brother in some of the most important circumstances of her 
life for the last sixteen years, his wife's sister, Charlotte, wife of 
Anthony Froude, was laid there under the shade of the fir trees 
she loved so well. Her grave was to him during the remainder of 
his own life a sacred spot, where he would go almost daily to 
commune in spirit with the dead, where flowers were always kept 
blooming, and where on the Sunday morning he would himself su- 
perintend the decorations — the cross and wreaths of choice flowers 
placed by loving hands upon it. 

Death was very busy that year among those he loved, and before 
twelve months were over three of those who stood around that grave, 
a brother, a nephew, and a friend, John Ashley Warre, Charles 
Grenfell, and Mr. John Parker, were all called away into the un- 
seen world. 

The latter, publisher, of West Strand, London, who had been 
■fellow student with Charles Kingsley, at King's College, London, 
and with whom he had renewed his old intimacy at the publication 
of the '■ Saint's Tragedy," was a constant visitor at the Rectory, 

* Before his appointment at Cambridge he had begun a " School History of 
England," of which only the three first chapters were written. 



The Fuhcre. 307 

At Mr. Parker's house in London he had met the very best liter- 
ary society whenever he had an evening to spare away from home, 
and his death made a great gap in the knot of remarkable men who 
had gathered round him. In a letter to one of these, Mr. Skel- 
ton, Mr. Kingsley thus speaks of him : — 

"I trust if you come to London you will take courage to come 
forty miles further to Eversley. You will meet there, not only for 
your own sake but for John Parker's, a most cordial welcome. 
Before our window lies the grave of one whom he adored, my 
wife's favorite sister. He was at her funeral. The next funeral 
which her widowed husband and I attended was his : Froude 
nursed him like a brother till the moment of death. His was 
a great soul in a pigmy body ; and those who know how I loved 
him, know what a calumny it is to say that I preach ' muscular 
Christianity.' " 

TO JOHN BULLAR, ESQ. 

Eversley, i860. 

" I am getting all right now, by dint of much riding with my 
boy, who is home for Easter. Riding has a specific effect on me, 
both on body and mind, and I hardly know how I should keep 
well without it. I hope you have not suffered, like me, with this 
gale. Two of the prettiest trees on my lawn (and I have some 
very pretty ones) came down with a crash this morning; and I have 
had the melancholy pleasure and exercise of dismembering ancient 
friends. When spring is coming, I cannot guess. My hope is that 
this gale will 'blow the weather out,' as sailors say; and that we 
shall have a sudden turn to thunder, heat, and rain. I have seen 
this happen several times, just at this season. 

" I am utterly astonished at your courage in letting your wife go 
to Egypt. I have just let mine go to Devonshire without me, 
to nurse a sick sister, and I feel like a cat without its skin." 

After he had taken his M.A. degree he writes from the north to 
his wife — 

" I have been thinking and praying a good deal over my future 
life. A new era has opened for me : I feel much older, anxious, 
and full of responsibility ; but more cheerful and settled than I 
have done for a long time. All that book writing and struggling 
is over, and a settled position and work is before me. Would that 
it were done, the children settled in life, and kindly death near to 
set one off again with a new start somewhere else. I should like 
the only epitaph on our tomb to be Thekla's : 

" ' We have lived and loved, 
We live and love.' " 



3o8 Charles Kingsley. 

No book was written this year, his spare time being given to the 
preparation of his Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge, and the course 
of Lectures which was to follow it. By command of the Prince 
Consort, he preached the annual sermon for the Trinity House, of 
which H.R. H. was then Master. He preached also at Whitehall, 
Windsor Castle, and St. James's. He was made chaplain to the 
Civil Service Volunteers ; he lectured at Warminster and Bury St. 
Edmund's. A few weeks' rest in Ireland with Mr. Fronde, helped 
him greatly in preparing for his career in Cambridge, and at Mark- 
ree Castle he killed his first salmon, a new and long coveted 
experience in life. 

Markree Castle, Sligo, July 4, i860. 

". . . . I have done the deed at last — killed a real actual 
live salmon, over five pounds weight, and lost a whopper from 
light hooking. Here they. are by hundreds, and just as easy to 
catch as trout ; and if the wind would get out of the north, I could 
catch fifty pounds of them in a day. This place is full of glory — 
very lovely, and well kept up. 

"But I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that 
hundred miles of horrible country. I don't believe they are our 
fault. I believe there are not only many more of them than of 
old, but that they are happier, better, more comfortably fed and 
lodged under our rule than they ever were. But to see white 
chimpanzees is dreadful ; if they were black, one would not feel it 
so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as 
white as ours. Tell Rose I will get her plants. 1 have got the 
great Butterwort already; very fine. . . .", 

July 5- 
" I had magnificent sport this morning — five salmon killed (big- 
gest, seven pounds), and another huge fellow ran right away to sea, 
carrying me after him waist deep in water, and was lost, after 
running 200 yards, by fouling a ship's hawser ! There is nothing 
like it. The excitement is maddening, and the exertion very 
severe. I am going to sleep for two hours, having been up at 
four " 

The summer of i860 was a very wet one. Rain fell almost in- 
cessantly for three months. The farmers were frightened, and the 
clergy all over the country began to use the prayer against rain. 
The cholera had long been threatening England, and Mr. Kings- 
ley's knowledge of physical and sanitary science had told him how 
beneficial this heavy rain was — a gift from God at that particular 



Sir Charles Lyell and the Rain Question. 309 

moment to ward off the enemy wliich was at hand, by cleansing 
drains and sweeping away refuse, and giving the poor an abundance 
of sweet clean water. It was a notable fact that while ignorant 
people were crying out against the rain, the chemists complained 
that there was so little illness they had nothing to do, and the 
medical men pronounced it to be a very healthy season. The 
parishioners of Eversley, however, remonstrated with him for not 
using the prayer for fine weather, and he answered them by preach- 
ing a sermon on Matth. vii. 9-1 1, which provoked much discussion, 
and was pubHshed under the title of " Why should we pray for fair 
weather ? " 

On this subject Sir Charles Lyell writes to Mr. Kingsley : — 

London, Septetnbe)- 23, i860. 

" On my return from the Continent, I find here your excellent 
sermon on the prayer for rain, sent to me, I presume, by your di- 
rection, and for which 1 return you many thanks. Two weeks 
ago, I happened to remark to a stranger, who was sitting next me 
at a table d'hote at Rudoldstadt in Thuringia, that I feared the 
rains must have been doing a great deal of mischief. He turned 
out to be a scientific man from Berlin, and replied, ' I should think 
they were much needed to replenish the springs, after three years 
of drought' 

" 1 immediately felt that I had made an idle and thoughtless 
speech. Some thirty years ago I was told at Bonn of two proces- 
sions of peasants, who had climbed to the top of the Peter's Berg, 
one composed of vine-dressers, who were intending to return 
thanks for sunshine, and pray for its continuance : the others from 
a corn district, wanting the drought to cease and the rain to fall. 
Each were eager to get possession of the shrine of St. Peter's 
Chapel before the other, to secure the saint's good offices, so they 
came to blows with fists and sticks, much to the amusement of the 
Protestant heretics at Bonn, who, I hope, did not by such prayers 
as you allude to, commit the same solecism, occasionally, only less 
coarsely carried out into action." 

In the following winter Mr. Kingsley writes from Eversley to Sir 
Charles Bunbury on the same topic. 

"The frost here is intense and continuous. The result, the per- 
fect health of everybody. Of course, sufficient food and firing are 
required. But much that I have seen of late years (and this frost 
i/iter alia) proves to me that the most ' genial ' weather is not the 
healthiest. 



3 TO Charles Kings ley. 

" I have been called names, as though I had been a really selfish 
and cruel man, for a foolish ' Ode to the North-East Wind.' If my 
cockney critics had been country parsons, they would have been 
more merciful, when they saw me, as I have been more than once, 
utterly ill from attendmg increasing sick cases during a soft south- 
west November of rain and roses ; and then, released by a hard 
frost, my visits stopped in a few days by the joyful answer, 'Thank 
God, we are getting all well now, in this beautiful seasonable 
weather.' 'Seasonable weather' — that expression has taught me 
much. In the heart of the English laborer and farmer^ unsophisti- 
cated by any belief that the Virgin Mary or the saints can coax the 
Higher Powers into sending them a shower or a sunbeam, if they 
be sufficiently coaxed and flattered themselves — into their hearts 
and minds has sunk a deep belief that God is just and wise, and 
orders all things well, according to a 'law which cannot be broken.' 
A certain sermon of mine about the rains, which shocked the clergy 
of all denominations, pleased deeply, thank God, my own laborers 
and farmers. They first thanked me heartily for it, and begged for 
copies of it. I then began to see (what I ought to have seen long 
before) that the belief in a good and just God is the foundation, if 
not of a scientific habit of mind, still of a habit of mind into which 
science can fall, and seed, and bring forth fruit in good ground. I 
learnt from that to solve a ])uzzle which had long disturbed me — 
why the French philosophers of the last century, denying and 
scoffing at much which I hold true and dear, had still been not only 
men of science, but men who did good work in their time. They 
believed, even Voltaire, in a good God — at least they said, ' If God 
is at all, He is good, just, and wise.' That thought enabled them 
at once to face scientific fact, and to testify against cruelty, oppres- 
sion, ignorance, and all the works of darkness wherever they found 
them. And so I learnt to thank God for men who seemed not to 
believe in Him, and to value more and more the moral instincts of 
men, as a deeper and more practical theology than their dogmas 
about God. Excuse this tirade. But you are one of the few per- 
sons to whom I can speak my whole heart. . 

" Meanwhile, you would exceedingly oblige me by telling me 
where the geology of Palestine is described. I cannot get trust- 
worthy information about it. Lynch and the man who went some 
years ago to look for coal, tell me very little ; and though Lord 
Lindsay has some hints about the volcanic appearances north of 
the Lake Tiberias, he tells one nothing about the age and super- 
position of the beds. It seems strange that so httle should be 
known about one of the most remarkable volcanic districts of the 
world. The age of the normal limestones ; of the bitumen beds of 
the Dead Sea ; of the Edomite mountains ; and of the recent (?) 
volcanic rocks of the north, all ought to be known by some one or 
other. But most who have gone have wasted their time in looking 



Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge. 311 

for the ' Cities of the Plain,' instead of collecting sound physical 
facts. Some have been afraid, it seemed to me, of looking at the 
physical facts too closely, for fear of coming to some ' rationalist ' 
conclusion." 

In the autumn the new Professor went up to Cambridge. " It is 
with a feeling of awe, almost of fear, that I find myself in such a 
place on such an errand," he said when he delivered his Inaugural 
Lecture * in the crowded Senate House on the 12th of November. 
He had an enthusiastic welcome from the undergraduates, and 
the lecture, which was published under the title of "The Limits of 
Exact Science applied to History," was listened to with profound 
attention, and most kindly received by all ranks in the university. 
He now settled in Cambridge with his family till Christmas, and 
began his' first course of lectures, eventually published as "The 
Roman and the Teuton," to a class of upwards of one hundred 
undergraduates, and during the nine years of his professorship his 
class was one of the best attended in the university. His residence 
in Cambridge enabled him to cultivate one of the most valuable 
friendships of his life, that of Sir Charles Fox Bunbury, of Barton 
Hall, Suffolk, at whose house, rich in itself with works of art, and 
with a museum and arboretum, in which he delighted, he had the 
rare pleasure of meeting, year by year, men distinguished in science, 
in literature, and in society. There he first met Sir Charles Lyell, 
Sir Edmund Head, Dr. Joseph Hooker, and Sir Louis Mallet, and 
renewed his friendship with Lord Arthur Harvey (now Bishop of 
Bath and Wells), and his happy days at Barton, which became a 
second home to himself and his family, were a constant refresh- 
ment to his spirit. 

" I cannot understand," he says, with characteristic modesty, in 
a letter to Sir Charles, after one of his first visits to him, "the kind 
words which you use about my visit to you. That you should 
speak so kindly of a poor stammering superficial person hke me, 
shows me only that there are more good and kind and tolerant 
people in the world than I looked for, and I knew there were 
many . . , ." 

The friendship he so dearly prized was mutual. But Sir Charles's 

* The Inaugural Lecture is now incorporated with the new edition of the 
'* Roman and the Teuton," with a preface by Max Miiller. (Macmillan.) 



312 Charles Kingsley. 

generous appreciation must be told in his own words in a letter to 
Mrs. Kingsley. 

Barton, October i8, 1875. 

"I have lost in him," he says, "an invaluable friend ; one whom 
for many years past I have truly loved and revered, and who has 
left a blank, that, for me, can never be filled up. I scarcely ever 
was in his company without learning something from him. Much 
as I like and admire his writings — to many of which I return again 
and again with fresh pleasure — his conversation was much more 
delightful than his books. I have very seldom, if ever, known a 
man whose talk was so charming, so rich in matter, so various, 
so easy and unassuming, so instructive and so free from dogmatism. 
Sensibility, humor, wisdom, were most happily blended in it. Many 
a long conversation I have enjoyed with him, and the remembrance 
of them will always be precious to me ; but I continually regret 
that my memory could not retain more of what I heard from him. 
Our talk often turned upon subjects of natural science, in which 
he delighted, and of which his knowledge vvas extensive and sound. 
He more than once said to me that, if circumstances had allowed 
him leisure, botany, and natural history in general, would have 
been his favorite studies. We passed many hours (delightful to 
me) in examining together my botanical collections, and discussing 
the questions which they suggested. His remarks were always 
instructive and valuable. He had not, indeed, had leisure to 
prosecute those elaborate researches, or to acquire that vast knowl- 
edge of details, which belong to the great masters of science ; 
but his knowledge was by no means superficial. He had mastered 
the leading principles and great outlines of scientific natural his- 
tory, in its principal branches ; and the large generalizations in 
which he delighted, were based on a well-directed study of facts, 
both in books and in nature. 

" He had the true naturalist's eye for quick and acute observa- 
tion ; the philosopher's love of large views and general principles; 
the poet's faculty of throwing a glow of light upon the objects 
which he wished to illustrate. This combination of powers gave 
a peculiar charm to his descriptions of natural objects, as is well 
exemplified in his West Indian book and in many parts of his 
essays, especially in ' From Ocean to Sea,' ' My Winter Garden,' 
and ' Chalk Stream Studies.' I think it a great loss to science that 
he was not able to carry out a plan which, as he told me, he had 
formed ; — that of writing the Natural History of his own district, 
the district of the Bagshot sands. He would have made of it a 
work of remarkable interest. 

" Another quality of Mr. Kingsley, by which I was particularly 
struck in the course of our discussions on these subjects, was his 



Mr. Kiiigsleys Modesty. 313 

remarkable modesty, indeed humility. He never dogmatized ; 
never put himself forward as an authority ; was always ready to 
welcome any suggestion from a fellow-laBorer ; and indeed always 
seemed more anxious to learn than to teach. I have been tempted 
to dwell, perhaps too long, on one aspect only of his character and 
genius ; but I iDelieve you wish to have my impression of him in 
this point of view. His higher qualities are indeed more generally 
known, through his writings, and I will not attempt to expatiate on 
a theme, to which more justice may be done by others. I can 
safely say that he was one of the best men I have known ; his 
conversation was not only agreeable, but had a constant tendency 
to make one wiser and better ; and when it was directed to spe- 
cially religious topics, his tone of feeling and thought appeared to 
me both elevating and comforting. I shall ever feel grateful for 
having been allowed to enjoy the friendship of such a man. 
" Believe me, 

" My Dear Mrs. Kingsley, 

" Ever yours affectionately, 

"Charles J. F. Bunbury." 



CHAPTER XXI. 

1861— 1862. 
Aged 42-43. 

Cambridge — Lectures to the Prince of Wales — Essays and Reviews — Letters to 
Dr. Stanley — Bishop of Winchester — Tracts for Priests and People — Death of 
the Prince Consort — Letter to Sir C. Bunbury — The Water-babies — Installa- 
tion Ode at Cambridge — Visit to Scotland — British Association — Lord Dun- 
dreary. 

" The longer I live, the more certain 1 am," said Sir T. Fowell 
Buxton, " that the great difference between men, the feeble and 
the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy and invin- 
cible determination — a purpose once fixed, and then death or vic- 
tory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this 
world ; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will 
make a two-legged creature a man without it." 

It was this very invincible determination and energy which car- 
ried Charles Kingsley through work, and sometimes a distracting 
confusion of different works, and which preserved his often weary 
body and exhausted brain from breaking down entirely : but more 
than this, it was his child-like faith in God which kept him not only 
free from the irritability so common to all highly-strung natures, 
but cheerful and brave under every circumstance. 

The weight of responsibility that pressed heavily on him during 
this year was added to by the duty and honor of giving private lec- 
tures to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, who had just left Oxford, 
and kept the usual terms at Cambridge during 1861. On the 2nd 
of January, Mr. Kingsley received through the Prince's tutor, Mr. 
Herbert Fisher, a message from the Prince Consort on the subject 
of his son's studies, informing him how they had been conducted at 
Oxford — how a special class had been formed there for instruction 
in Modern History, which instruction had been carried up to the 
reign of William III. — what book had been used, &c., and request- 
ing the Cambridge Professor to consult Dr. Whewell, then Master 
of Trinity, as to the undergraduates who should attend with the 
Prince. To this Mr. Kingsley rephed : 



Lectures to the Prince of Wales. 3 1 5 

EvERSLEY Rectory, January 2, 1871. 

" Do me the kindness to inform the Prince Consort that his 
wishes are, of course, commands to me. ' 

"I shall have great pleasure in following out the excellent 
method sketched for me in your letter, and in putting myself into 
Dr. Whewell's hands as to the formation of a special class for His 
Royal Highness. 

'' Any information which you can give me I shall most thank- 
fully accept and use. 1 i)ut myself entirely into your hands, both 
as the expounder of the Prince Consort's wishes, and as the Prince 
of Wales's tutor The responsibility is too solemn and too sudden 
for me to act in any way upon my own private judgment in 
the matter. 

" The first question which I have to ask is — up to what year in 
the i8th century I ought to extend my lectures?" 

The class was accordingly formed, and the names selected by 
the Rev. W. Mathison, senior Tutor of Trinity, subject to Dr. 
Whewell's approval, were sent in to the Professor.* 

Early hi February the Pnnce of Wales settled at Madingley, and 
rode in three times a week to Mr. Kingsley's house, for lectures, 
twice with the class, and every Saturday to go through a resume of 
the week's work alone. 

During the course of the academical year the Professor carried 
the class up to the reign of George IV. ; and at the end of each 
term he set questions for the Prince, which were always most satis- 
factorily answered. Throughout this year the sense of responsi- 
bihty which would otherwise have been overpowering, was relieved 
not only by the intense interest of the work, in which he was 
allowed perfect freedom of sjjeech, but by the attention, courtesy, 
and intelligence of his Royal pupil, whose kindness to him then 
and in after-life, made him not only H.R.H.'s loyal, but his most 
attached servant. 

But the year ended sadly, and his intercourse with the Prince of 
Wales was brought to an abrupt termination by the death of the 

* Mr. Lee Warner, of St. John's College, lately head of Rugby School. Mr. 
Stuart, Rugby, of St. John's. Mr. Main, of St. John's, the best mathemalLi n 
of his year, in his third year. Mr. Cay, of Caius College, a freshman, who had 
just obtained an open scholarship. Lord John Hervey, Trinity. Hon. C. 
Lyttleton, Trinity. Mr. Hamilton, Trinity. Mr. C. Wood, son of Right 
Hon. Sir Charles Wood. Hon. Henry Strutt, Trinity. Mr. A. W. Elliott, 
freshman of Trinity. And later in the year, Mr. George Howard, of Trinity. 



3i6 Charles Kingsley. 

Prince Consort, which threw a gloom all over England, and was 
felt as a deep personal grief, as well as a national loss, by every one 
who had had the privilege of coming in personal contact with His 
Royal Highness. 

Mr. Kingsley's professional duties with the Prince of Wales 
obliged him to keep all the terms at Cambridge, only returning to 
Eversley for the long vacation; and as his curate was in deacon's 
orders, his friend, the Rev. Septimus Hansard (now Rector of 
Bethnal Green), kindly consented to live at the Rectory during his 
absence, to take the lead in the Sunday services, and superintend 
the parish work. His able assistance relieved the Rector's anxiety, 
while it strengthened their mutual friendship. 

About this period " Essays and Reviews " came out, and the 
following letter shows Mr. Kingsley's impression of the attitude of 
Cambridge at the publication : 

TO REV. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 

CAMBRroOE, February 19, 1861. 

" Cambridge lies in magnificent repose, and shaking lazy ears 
stares at her more nervous elder sister and asks what it is all 
about. 

" She will not persecute the authors of the Essays ; and what is 
more, any scraps of the Simeonite party, now moribund here, who 
try to get up a persecution, will be let alone — and left to ])ersecute 
on their own hook. That is the Cambridge danger. Cool indif- 
ferentism : not to the doctrines, but to the means of fighting for 
them. 

" The atmosphere is the most liberal (save ' Bohemia') which I 
ever lived in. And it is a liberality (not like that of Bohemia, of 
want of principle or creed), but of real scholarly largeness and 
lovingness between men who disagree. We 'live and let live' here, 
I find, to my delight. But with that" will come the feeling — in which, 
I confess, I share — what the plague had these men to do, starting 
a guerilla raid into the enemy's country, on their own responsibility ? 
We are no more answerable for them, than for Garibaldi. If they 
fail, they must pay the penalty. They did not ask us — they called 
no synod of the Broad Church — consulted no mass of scholars, as 
to what could or could not be done just now. They go and levy 
war on their own account, and each man on his own account. 
Each one of us might make himself res])onsible for one essay. But 
being published together, one does become responsible for all or 
none; and that I won't be, nor any man in Cambridge. I would 
not even be responsible for * * * 's Article, much as I trust and 



Cafnbridge and the Essays. 317 

respect him. The world, mind, does take one as all, and all as one. 
The * Essays and Reviews ' are one book in the mind of the world, 
and if they were not meant to be, they should not have been pub- 
lished in one volume. This is what Cambridge (and I) feel, as far 
as I can ascertain. 

" Next. There is little or nothing, says Cambridge, in that book 
which we have not all of us been through already. Doubts, denials, 
destructions — we have faced them till we are tired of them. But 
we have faced them in silence, hoping to find a positive solution. 
Here comes a book which states all the old doubts and difficulties, 
and gives us nothing instead. Here are men still pulling down, 
with far weaker hands than the Germans, from whom they borrow, 
and building up nothing instead: So we will preserve a stoic calm. 
We wish them all well. We will see fair play for them, according 
to the forms of English law and public opinion. But they must 
fight their own battle. We cannot be responsible for other men's 
campaigns. 

" This, I think, is the feeling of Cambridge. I do not expect, 
from what I hear, that you will have any manifesto against Essays 
and Reviews. *** of *** and *** may get up something, and 
cowards and trimmers may sign it, for fear of committing them- 
selves ; but I think they will win little but wind by their movement, 
and that ' they may bottle if it will help them.' 



TO THE LORD BISHOP -OF WINCHESTER, 

(Dr. Sumner.) 

eversley, 1s61. 
" My Lord, 

"1 have received a circular from the venerable the arch- 
deacon, asking me to sign an address to your lordship in reference 
to the ' Essays and Reviews,' of miserable notoriet}'. That address 
I declined to sign upon a question of archidiaconai jurisdiction. 
I begged that the letter might be sent to the archdeacon. I 
hope that your lordship will do me the honor of perusing it, if it be 
sent on to )'-ou. But in justice to your lordship, and to myself, I 
nnist tell you what I thought myself bound not to tell the arch- 
deacon in his official cai^acity. I should be sorry that you should 
think that I agreed with a book whose publication I have deeply 
deplored, and have more reason to deplore every day. 

'• I deplore it first, for itself; second, for the storm which I saw 
it would raise. For itself. With the exception of Dr. Temple's 
essay, in which I can see nothing heterodox, be his theory right or 
wrong, all the essays deny but do not affirm. 

" The doubts and puzzles which they raise afresh have passed 
through the mind of every thinking man in the last twenty-five years, 



3 1 8 Charles Kingsley. 

and it pained me much to see them re-stated — in one or two cases 
very offensively — without any help to a practical solution. I con- 
fess to having thrust the book away in disgust, as saying once again, 
very weakly, what I had long put out of sight and mind, in the 
practical realities of parish work. If I may intrude my own doings 
on your lordship, when my new curate came back to me after ordi- 
nation, having heard your lordship's allusion to these 'Essays and 
Reviews,' and asked me whether he should read them, I told him 
* By no means. They will disturb your mind with questions which 
you are too young to solve. Stick to the old truths and the old 
paths, and learn their divineness by sick-beds and in every-day 
work, and do not darken your mind with intellectual puzzles, which 
may breed disbelief, but can never breed vital religion, or practical 
usefulness.' As for my own opinions, my lord, they are sufficiently 
known. The volumes of sermons which I have published are, I 
am sure, a sufficient guarantee to you as they are to the public, 
that I keep to the orthodox faith, and the orthodox forraulte, without 
tormenting my soul, or my hearers, with fruitless argument on 
things which we shall never know, save by taking our Bible in hand 
like little children, and obeying it. Next, I deplore the publication 
of these Esb.iys from the storm which I saw they would raise. As 
a fact, they are being sold now by hundreds, where one copy would 
have been sold ; and therefore thousands of brains are being put 
into'an unwholesome ferment, instead of one here and there. The 
effect at the Universities will be very bad ; for young men are only 
too glad to fly off on intellectual disquisitions, from the plain 
requirements' of Christian faith and duty, and therefore I could 
have wished that the book had been passed by in silence, as what 
it is, a very weak and inconsiderable book. But it is too late. 
That my curates, and my parish, shall be kept clear, if I can do it, 
of all fruitless and unwholesome speculations, and taught to believe 
in the plain doctrines of the Prayer-book and Articles, and act up 
to them, I promise you with all my heart." 

In the spring a set of " Tracts for Priests and People " were 
brought out under the superintendence of Mr. Maurice. Mr. 
Kingsley was asked to write, but his time was absorbed witk parish 
work and Cambridge lectures. 

The American war, which was occupying general attention, 
decided the Professor to take the History of America as the sub- 
ject of his lectures for 1862. 

The correspondence of the year, of which little has been recov- 
ered, closes with a letter to Sir Charles Bunbury, written on his 
return to Eversley, in that time of general mourning in which all 
England shared. 



The American Qitestion. 319 

EVERSLEY, December 31, 1861. 

"... As for the American question, on which you do me 
the honor to ask my opinion, I have thought of nothing else for 
some time ; for I cannot see how I can be a Professor of past 
Modern History without the most careful study of the history which 
is enacting itself around me. But 1 can come to no conclusion, 
save that to which all England seems to have come — that the war 
will be a gain_ to us. So strongly do I feel the importance of this 
crisis, that I mean to give as my public lectures, next October 
term, the History of the American States ; and most thankful to you 
should I be, if you could recommend me any books throwing light 
on it, particularly on the little known period (strange to say), from 
1815 to the present time. 

" As for the death of the Prince Consort, I can say nothing. 
Words fail me utterly. What little I could say, I put into a sermon 
for my own parishioners, which I will send you if you will allow 

me I need not say how \ve regretted not being able 

to accept your kind invitation. But the heavy work of last term, 
and the frightful catastrophe [Prince Consort's death J with which 
it ended, sent us all home to rest, if rest is possible, when, on 
coming home, one finds fresh arrears of work waiting for one, 
which ought to have been finished off months since. The feel- 
ing of being always behind hand, do what one will, is second only 
in torment to that of debt. 

" I long to find myself once again talking over with you ' the 
stones which tell no lies.' " 

The opening of 1862 found him once more settled at Eversley, 
and enjoying the return to parish work after the heavy duties 
and responsibilities of such a year at Cambridge as cou'ld never 
come again. 

His mind was particularly vigorous this year, and the refresh- 
ment of visits with his wife to the Grange in the winter, and to 
Scotland in the summer, giving him change of thought and scene, 
prepared him for returning to his professorial work in the 
autumn, and to his controversy on the Cotton Famine with Lan- 
cashire mill-owners and millionaires. 

TO CAPTAIN ALSTON, R.N. 

Eversley, March 20, 1862. 
"As for the Workmen's Club, Mrs. Kingsley has sent you a list 
of books which she recommends. The best periodical for them is 
certainly Norman McLeod's ' Good Words,' which is quite admira- 
ble, and has now a very large circulation — 70,000, 1 believe. I 



320 Charles Kings ley. 

do not think that I would give them Carlyle yet. If I did, it would 
be ' Past and Present.' And yet, things have so mended since it 
was written that that would be unfair. The 'French Revolution' 
is the book, if they would only understand it. 

" I am not the man to give you any practical suggestions as to 
the working of such a club. But if when you come to London, you 
choose call on my dear friend Tom Hughes (Tom Brown), he would 
give you many admirable hints learnt from experience. 

"I am truly thankful to hear tliat I have helped to make a 
churchman of you. The longer I live, the more I find the Church 
of England the most rational, liberal, and practical form which 
Christianity has yet assumed ; and dread as much seeing it assimi- 
lated to dissent, as to Popery. Strange to say, Thomas Carlyle 
now says that the Church of England is the most rational thing he 
sees now going, and that it is the duty of every wise man to support 
it to the uttermost." 

Sitting at breakfast at the rectory one spring morning this year, 
ihe father was reminded of an old promise, " Rose, Maurice, and 
Mary- have got their book, and baby must have his." He made 
no answer, but got up at once and went into his study, locking the 
door. In half an hour he returned with the story of little Tom. 
This was the first chapter of " The Water-babies," written off without 
a correction. The rest of the book, which appeared monthly in 
"Macmillan's Magazine," was composed with the same quickness 
and ease as the first chapter — if indeed what was so purely an inspi- 
ration could be called composing, for the whole thing seemed to 
flow naturally out of his brain and heart, lightening both of a 
burden without exhausting either ; and the copy went up to the 
printer's with scarcely a flaw. He was quite unprepared for the 
sensation it would make. 

Nothing helped the books and sermons more than the silence 
and solitude of a few days' fisliing. The Water-babies, especially, 
have the freshness and fragra'ice of the sea breeze and the river- 
side in almost every page. 

In the summer the Duke of Devonshire was installed at Cam- 
bridge as Chancellor of the University, of which he had been so 
distinguished a member, taking the place of the lamented Prince 
Consort; and the Professor of Modern History, as in duty bound, 
wrote an installation ode, which, being set to music by Sir William 
Sterndale Bennett, gave him the acquaintance and friendship of 
one of the first English musicians. 



Catching Salmon. 321 

In August, with his wife and his eldest boy Maurice, he went to 
Scotland for a month's holiday, whence he writes 

TO HIS MOTHER. 

MuRTHLEY Castle, Angicst, 1862. 

" Here we are in this delicious place, full of beautiful walks and 
plantations — with Birnam. Wood opposite my window as 1 write — 
only all the wood having gone to Dunsinane in Macbeth's time, 

the hill alone is left We had reels last night, Lord 

John Manners and Sir Hugh Cairns both dancing All 

that is said of the grandeur of the Tay I quite agree in. I never 
saw such a river, though there are very few salmon up. I got into 
one huge fish yesterday ; but he shook his head and shook out the 
hook very soon. Maurice caught a good sea trout of 2f lbs., which 
delighted him. Monday we start for Inveraray, via Balloch, Loch 
Lomond, and Tarbet." 

Inveraray Castle, Augu^^t 21. 

"The loveliest spot I ever savv — large lawns and enormous tim- 
ber on the shores of a salt-water loch, with moor and mountain 
before and behind. I gat myself up this morning at four for sal- 
mon, yesterday I could kill none ; water too low. To-day the first 
cast I hooked a ten pounder, and the hook broke ! The river is 
swarming ; they are flopping and smacking about the water every- 
where ; but rh, dear I why did Heaven make midges ? " 

The visit to Inveraray was one of the bright memories and green 
spots of his life, always looked back upon by himself and those who 
were with him with gratitude, combining as it did not only beauti- 
ful scenery, but intellectual, scientific, and spiritual communings 
on the highest, holiest themes. Such holidays were few and far be- 
tween in his life of labor, and when they came he could give him- 
self up to them, " thanks," as he would say, 

"to my blessed habit of intensity, which has been my greatest help 
in life. 1 go at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the 
world for the time being. That's the secret of all hard-working 
men ; but most of them can't carry it into their amusements. 
Luckily for me, I can stop from all work, at short notice, and turn 
head over heels in the sight of all creation for a spell." 

The British Association met at Cambridge on the ist October. 
It was the first he had ever attended. The Zoological and Geo- 
logical sections were those which naturally attracted him, and the 

21 



322 Charles Kingsley. 

acquaintances he made, the distinguished men lie now met, (among 
them, the lamented Beete Jukes, and Lucas Barrett, who was 
drowned in the survey of the Jamaica coral reefs the next year,) 
made this an era in his life, and gave a fresh impetus to his scien- 
tific studies. While attending Section D, he was present at the 
famous tournament between Professor Owen and Professor Hux- 
ley on the- Hippocampus question, which led to his writing a little 
squib for circulation among his friends. As it will be new to many 
it is given at length. 

SPEECH OF LORD DUNDREARY IN SECTION D, ON FRIDAY LAST, 
ON THE GREAT HIPPOCAMPUS QUESTION. 

Cambridge, October, 1861. 

" Mr. President and Gentlemen, I mean ladies and Mr. Presi- 
dent, 1 am sure that all ladies and gentlemen will see the matter 
just as I do ; and I am sure we're all very much obliged to these 
scientific gentlemen for quarrelling — no — I don't mean that, that 
wouldn't be charitable, and it's a sin to steal a pin : but I mean 
for letting us hear them quarrel, and so eloquently, too ; though, 
of course, we don't understand what is the matter, and which is in 
the right ; but of course we were very much delighted, and, I may 
say, quite interested, to find that we had all hippopotamuses in 
our brains. Of course they're right, you know, because seeing's 
believing. 

" Certainly, I never felt one in mine ; but perhaps it's dead, and 
so didn't stir, and then of course, it don't count, you know. A dead 
dog is as good as a live lion. Stop — no. A live lion is as good 
as a dead dog — no, that won't do again. There's a mistake some- 
where. What was I saying ? Oh, hippopotamuses. Well, I say, 
]Derhaps mine's dead. They say hippopotamuses feed on water. 
No, I don't think that, because teetotallers feed on water, and they 
are always lean ; and the hippo's fat, at least in the Zoo. Live in 
water, it must be; and there's none in my brain. There was when 
I was a baby, .my aunt says ; but they tapped me ; so I suppose 
^ the hippopotamus died of drought. No — stop. It wasn't a hip- 
popotamus after all, it was hip — hip — not hip, hip, hurrah, you 
know, that comes after dinner, and the section hasn't dined, at 
least since last night, and the Cambridge wine is very good, I will 
say that. No. 1 recollect now. Hippocampus it was. Hippo- 
campus, a sea-horse ; 1 learnt that at Eton ; hippos, sea, and cam- 
pus, a horse — no — campus a sea, and hippos, a horse, that's right. 
Only campus ain't a sea, it's a field, I know that ; Campus Martins 
— I was swished for that at Eton — ought to be again, 1 believe, if 
every dog had his day. But at least it's a sea-hoi;se, I know that, 



Lord Dundreary. 323 

because I saw one alive at Malta with the regiment, and it i-ang a 
bell. No ; it was a canary that rang a bell ;- but this had a tail 
like a monkey, and made a noise like a bell. I dare say you won't 
believe me; but 'pon honor I'm speaking truth — noblesse oblige, 
you know ; and it hadn't been taught at all, and perha])s if it had it 
wouldn't have learnt : but it did, and it was in a monkey's tail. No, 
stop, it must have been in its head, because it was in its brain ; and 
everyone has brains in his head, unless he's a skeleton ; and it 
curled its tail round things like a monkey, that I know, for I saw it 
with my own eyes. That was Professor Rolleston's theory, you 
know. It was Professor Huxley said it was in his tail — not Mr. 
Huxley's, of course, but the ape's : only apes have no tails, so I 
don't quite see that. And then the other gentleman who got up 
last, Mr. Flower, you know, he said that it was all over the ape, 
everywhere. All over hippocampuses, from head to foot, poor 
beast, like a dog all over ticks ! I wonder why they don't rub blue- 
stone mto the back of its neck, as one does to a pointer. Well, 
then. Where was I? Oh! and Professor Owen said it wasn't in 
apes at all : but only in the order bimana, that's you and me. 
VVell, he knows best. And 'they all know best too, for they are 
monstrous clever fellows. So one must be right, and all the rest 
wrong, or else one of them wrong, and all the rest right — you see 
that? I wonder why they don't toss up about it. If they took a 
half-crown now, or a shilling, or even a fourpenny-piece would do, 
if they magnified it, and tost heads and tails, or Newmarket, if they 
wanted to be quite sure, why then there couldn't be any dispute 
among gentlemen after that, - of course. Well, then, about men 
being apes, I say, why shouldn't it be the other way, and the apes 
be men ? do you see ? Because then they might have as many 
hippocampuses in their brains as they liked, or hippopotamuses 
either, indeed. I should be glad indeed if it was so, if it was only 
for my aunt's sake ; for she says that her clergyman says, that if 
anybody ever finds a hippopotamus in a monkey's head, nothing 
will save her great, great, great — I can't say how great, you see — 
it's awful to think of — quite enormous grandfather from having been 
a monkey too ; and then what is to become of her precious soul ? 
So, for my aunt's sake, I should be very glad if it could be settled 
that way, really ; and I am sure the scientific gentlemen will take 
it into consideration, because they are gentlemen, as every one 
knows, and would not hurt a lady's feelings. The man who would 
strike a woman, you know — everybody knows that, it's in Shake- 
speare. And besides, the niggers say that monkeys are men, only 
they won't work for fear of being made to talk ; no, won't talk for 
fear of being made to work ; that's it (right for once, as I live !) 
and put their hands over their eyes at night for fear of seeing the 
old gentleman — and I'm sure that's just like a reasonable creature, 
1 used to when I was a little boy ; and you see the niggers have 



324 Chaides Kings ley. 

lived among them for thousands of years, and are monstrous Uke 
them, too, d'ye see/and so they must know best; and then it 
would be all right. 

"Well, then, about a gulf Professor Huxley says there's a gulf 
between a man and an ape. I'm sure I'm glad of it, especially if 
the ape bit; and Professor Owen says there ain't. What? am I 
wrong, eh ? Of course. Yes — beg a thousand pardons, really now. 
Of course — Professor Owen says there is, and Professor Huxley 
says there ain't. Well, a fellow can't recollect everything. But I 
say, if there's a gulf, the ape might get over it and bite one after 
all. I know Quintus Curtius jumped over a gulf at Eton — that is, 
certainly, he jumped in : but that was his fault, you see : if he'd 
put in more powder he might have cleared it, and then there would 
have been no gulf between him and an ape. But that don't matter 
so much, because Professor Huxley said the gulf was bridged over 
by a structure. Now I am sure I don't wish to be personal, espe- 
cially after the very handsome way in which Professor Huxley has 
drunk all our healths. Stop — no. It's we that ought to drink his 
health, I'm sure, Highland honors and all ; but at the same time I 
should have been obliged to him if he'd told us a little more about 
this structure, especially considering what nasty mischievous things 
apes are. Tore one of my coat tails off at the Zoological the other 
day. He ought^no, I don't say that, because it would seem like 
dictation, I don't like that; never could do it at school — wrote it 
down all wrong — got swished — hate dictation : — but I might humbly 
express that Professor Huxley might have told us a little, you see, 
about that structure. Was it wood ? W^as it iron ? Was it silver 
and gold, like London Bridge when Lady Lee danced over it, be- 
fore it was washed away by a man with a pipe in his mouth ? No, 
stop, I say — That can't be. A man with a pipe in his mouth wash 
away a bridge? Why a fellow can't work hard with a pipe in his 
mouth — everybody knows that — much less wash away a whole 
bridge. No, it's quite absurd — quite. Only I say, I should like 
to know something about this structure, if it was only to quiet my 
aunt. And then, if Professor Huxley can see the structure, why 
can't Professor Owen ? It can't be invisible, you know, unless it 
was painted invisible green, like Ben Hall's new bridge at Chelsea: 
only you can see that of course, for you have to pa)^ now when 
you go over, so I suppose the green ain't the right color. But 
that's another reason why I want them to toss up — toss up, you 
see, whether they saw it or not, or which of them should see it, or 
something of that kind, I'm sure that's the only way to settle ; and 
— oh, by-the-bye, as I said before — only I didn't, but I ought to 
have — if either of the gentlemen havn't half-a-crown about them, 
why a two-shilling-piece might do ; though I never carry then) my- 
self, for fear of giving one to a keeper ; and then he sets you down 
for a screw, you know. Because, you see, I see, I don't quite see, 



A New Volume of Sermons. 325 

and no offence to honorable members — learned and eloquent 
gentlemen, I mean; and though I don't wish to dictate, I don't 
quite think ladies and gentlemen quite see either. You see that? " 

(The noble lord, who had expressed so acurately the general 
sense of the meeting, sat down amid loud applause.) 

The cotton famine in the North, which occurred now, roused 
many thoughts and feelings in his mind and heart, and led to a 
correspondence in the " Times " and elsewhere. 

A new volume of sermons, " Town and Country Sermons," had 
recently been published. They were dedicated to his " most kind 
and faithful friend," the Dean of Windsor,* and contained several 
preached at Windsor and at Whitehall, with some of the deepest 
and most characteristic of his Eversley sermons — particularly "The 
Rock of Ages," " The Wrath of Love," " Pardon and Peace," and 
one most important one on the Athanasian Creed, called " The 
Knowledge of God." 

* The Hon. and Very Rev. Gerald Wellesley. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

1863. 
Aged 44. 

Fellow of the Geological Society — Work at Cambridge — Prince of Wales's Wed- 
' ding — Wellington College Chapel and Museum— Letter from Dr. Benson — 
Lecture at Wellington— Letters to Sir Charles Lyell, Prof Huxley, Charles 
Darwin, James A. Froude, &c. — Whitchurch Still-life — Toads in Holes — 
D.C.L. Degree at Oxford — Bishop Colenso — Sermons on the Pentateuch^ 
The Water-babies — Failing, Health. 

Professor Kingsley had this year the honor of adding three 
letters to his name by being made a Fellow of the Geological 
Society. He was proposed by his kind friend Sir Charles Bun- 
bury, and seconded by Sir Charles Lyell. " To belong to the 
Geological Society," he says in a letter to the former, "has long 
been an ambition of mine, but I feel how little I know, and how 
unworthy I am to mix with the really great men who belong to it. 
So strongly do I feel this, that if you told me plainly that 1 had no 
right to expect such an honor, I should placidly acquiesce in what 
I already feel to be true." The F.G.S. came as a counter- 
balance to his rejection at Oxford for the distinction of D.C.L., 
Avhich his friends there proposed to confer on him. 

The year was spent almost entirely at Eversley, for he found 
the salary of his JProfessorship did not admit of his keeping two 
houses and of moving his family backwards and forwards to 
Cambridge. He was therefore forced to part with his Cambridge 
house, and to go up twice a year merely, for the time required for 
his lectures (twelve to sixteen in number), and again at the exami- 
nation of his class for degrees. He deeply regretted this necessity, 
as it prevented his knowing the men in his class personally, which 
he had made a point of doing during the first two years of his resi- 
dence, when they came to his house, and many charming evenings 
were spent in easy intercourse between the Professor and his pupils, 
who met them on equal terms. From the first he made it one of 
his most important duties to do what he could to bridge over a 



The Royal Wedding. 327 

gulf which in his own day had been a vefy wide one between Dons 
and Students. That he had succeeded in doing this was proved 
by members of his class, writing to consult him after they left 
Cambridge on their studies, their ]wofessions, and their religious 
difficulties, in a way that showed their perfect confidence in his 
sympathy ; and had circumstances allowed of his residing at Cam- 
bridge, his personal influence would have been still greater. 
We now return to his correspondence. 

TO REV. E. PITCAIRN CAMPBELL. 

EVERSLEY, March 12, 1863. 

"We are just from the Royal Wedding — at least so I believe. 
We had (so 1 seem to remember) excellent places. Mrs. Kingsley 
in the temporary gallery in the choir. I in the household gallery, 
both within 15 yards of what, I am inclined to think, was really the 
Prince and Princess. But I can't swear to it. I am not at all sure 
that 1 did not fall asleep in the dear old chapel, with the banners 
and stalls fresh in my mind, and dream and dream of Edward the 
Fourth's time. At least, I saw live Knights of the Garter (myths 
to me till then). I saw real Princesses with diamond crowns, and 
trains, and fairies holding them up. 1 saw — what did I not see ? 
And only began to believe my eyes, when I met at the dejeuner 
certain of the knights whom I knew, clothed and in their right 
mind, like other folk ; and of the damsels and fairies many, who, I 
believe, were also flesh and blood, for they talked and ate with me, 
and vanished not away. 

"But seriously, one real thing I did see, and felt too — the serious 
grace and reverent dignity of my dear young Master, whose manner 
was perfect. And one other real thing — the Queen's sad face. 

I cannot tell you how auspicious I consider this 

event, or how happy it has made the little knot of us, the Prince's 
household,* who love him because we know him. I hear nothing 
but golden reports of the Princess from those who have known her 
long. I look forward to some opportunity of judging for myself" 

His time this year was divided between his parish work and the 
study of science, and in corresponding with scientific men. Mr. 
Darwin's " Origin of Species " and his book on the " Fertilization 
of Orchids," had opened a new world to him, and made all that he 
saw around him, if possible, even more full of divine significance 
than before. Wellington College was a continual interest to him. 
He lectured to the boys, and helped them to start a Museum. He 

* Mr. Kingsley had recently been made one of the Prhice's chaplains. 



J 



28 Charles Kings ley. 



felt bound to do all he coifld for Wellington College, not only be- 
cause his own son was there, and from his warm friendship with Dr. 
Benson, then head-master ; but because he looked upon the place 
as a memorial of the great Prince under whose fostering care it had 
risen into importance, as well as of the great Duke whose name it 
bore. The boys were continually at the Rectory, and Mr. Kingsley 
was always present at their great days, whether for the speeches or 
their athletic sports. 

Mr. Kingsley's Lecture on Natural History may well be prefaced 
by a letter from Dr. Benson, characteristic ahke of the writer and 
his subject. 

The Chancery, Lincoln, Sunday, July 11, 1875. 

"My dear Mrs. Kingsley, 

" . . . . There was a bold sketch of Mr. Kingsley in the 
Spectator in his squire-like aspect, and I think it was true. But I 
know that an equally true sketch might be made of him as a parish 
priest, who would have delighted George Herbert. The gentle, 
warm frankness with which he talked on a summer Sunday among 
the grassy and flowery graves. — The happy peace in which he 
walked, chatting, over to Bramshill chapel-school, and, after reading 
the evening service, preached in his surplice with a chair-back for 
his pulpit, on the deeps of the Athanasian Creed ; and, after thank- 
ing God for words that brought such truths so near, bade the villagers 
mark that the yQ.\y Creed which laid such stress on faith, told them 
that ' they who did good would go into everlasting life.' — His strid- 
ing across the ploughed field to ask a young ploughman in the dis- 
tance why he had not been at church on Sunday, and ending his 
talk with ' Now, you know, John, your wife don't want you lounging 
in bed half a Sunday morning. You get up and come to church, 
and let her get your Sunday dinner and make the house tidy, and 
then you mind your child in the afternoon while she comes to 
church.' These, and many other scenes, are brightly before me. 
His never remitted visits to sick and helpless, his knowledge of 
their every malady, and every change of their hopes and fears ; the 
sternness and the gentleness which he alternated so easily with 
foolish people ; the great respectfulness of his tone to old folks, 
made the rectory and church at Eversley the centre of the life of 
the men as well as their children and wives. Gipsies on Hartford- 
bridge flats have told me they considered Eversley their parish 
church wherever they went, and for his own parishioners, ' every 
man jack of them,' as he said, was a steady church-goer. But it 
was no wonder, for I never heard sermons with which more pains 
had been taken than those which be made for his poor people. 
There was so much, such deep teaching, conveyed in words that 



Lectures to Boys. 329 

were so plain. One on the conversion of St. Paul, and one on the 
Church, I shall never forget. The awe and reverence of his manner 
of celebrating the service was striking to any one who knew only 
his novels. Strangers several times asked me, who saw him at 
service in our own school-chapel, who it was who was so rapt in 
manner, who bowed so low at the Gloria and the name of Jesus 
Christ ; and so I too was surprised when he asked me, before 
preaching in his church, to use only the Invocation of the Trinity ; 
and when I observed that he celebrated the communion in the east- 
ward position. This he loyally gave up on the Purchas judgment, 
' because I mind the law,' but told me with what regret he discon- 
tinued what from his ordination he had always done, believing it 
the simple direction of the Prayer Book. 

"An amusing incident happened once, which, I daresay, he 
never heard of A sub -editor, of a famous rehgious paper, once 
attended a chapel service at Welhngton, when Mr. Kingsley 
preached, and then withdrew his son's name from our list, and pre- 
pared a leading article upon a supposed head-master, whose doc- 
trine and manner were so ' high.' 

"What always struck me in him was the care and pains which 
he took with all that he undertook. Nothing was hurried, or 
slurred, or dashing. 'I can tell you, Pve spared no trouble upon 
it,' he said, when we thanked him for the beautiful sermon on 
' Wisdom and her seven pillars,' wlaich he made for one of our 
days.* 

" In the readiest and yet most modest way he helped us wonder- 
fully. His presence looking on, helped our games into shape when 
we began with fifty raw little boys, and our football exploits, twelve 
years after, were as dear to him as to his son ; ' the Kingsley ' 
steeple-chase was the event of the year. But in far higher ways 
he helped us. He wrote an admirable paper for us, which was 
widely circulated, on School Museums ; he prevailed on the Royal 
College of Surgeons, on Lady Franklin, and other friends, to 
present the boys with many exquisite natural history specimens, 
and started all our collections. 

" His lectures (of which I trust some of his notes exist) on 
natural history, and two on geology, were some of the most bril- 
liant things I ever heard. Facts and theories, and speculations, 
and imaginations of what had been and might be, simply riveted 
the attention of 200 or 300 boys for an hour and a half or two 
hours, and many good proverbs of life sparkled among these. 
Their great effect was that they roused so nuich interest. At the 
same time his classification of facts such as the radiation of plants 
(Heather for instance) from geographical centres, gave substantial 
grounds for the work which he encouraged. ' Let us make a be- 



* Published in " Discipline and other Sermons." 



;^^o Charles Kingsley. 

ginning by knowing one little thing well, and getting roused as to 
what else is to be known.' 

" Nothing was more delightful too, to our boys, than the way in 
which he would come and make a little speech at the end of other 
occasional winter lectures, Mr. Lowne's or Mr. Henslow's, or 
about balloons, or, above all, when, at the close of a lecture 
of Mr. Barnes's, he harangued us in pure Dorset dialect, to the sur- 
prise and delight of the Dorsetshire poet. 

" In our many happy talks we scarcely ever agreed in our esti- 
mate of niediceval character or literature, but I learnt much from 
him. When even St. PJernard was not appreciated by him, it is 
not surprising that much of the life of those centuries was repul- 
sive, and its religious practice ' pure Buddhism,' as he used to say. 
At the same time, I never shall forget how he turned over on 
a person who was declaiming against ' idolatry.' ' Let me tell you, 
sir,' (he said with that forcible stammer), ' that if you had had 
a chance you would have done the same, and worse. The first 
idols were black stones, meteoric stones. And if you'd been a 
poor naked fellow, scratching up the ground with your nails, when a 
great lump of pyrites had suddenly half buried itself in the ground 
within three yards of you, with a horrid noise and smell, don't you 
think you'd have gone down on your knees to it, and begged it not 
to do it again, and smoothed it and oiled it, and anything else ?' 

" Greek life and feeling was dear to him in itself, and usually he 
was penetrated with thankfulness that it formed so large a part of 
education. 

" ' From that and from the Bible, boys learn what must be learnt 
among the grandest moral and spiritual reproofs of what is base. 
Nothing so fearful as to leave curiosity unslaked to help itself.' 
At other times he doubted. Still, if I measure rightly, he doubted 
only when he was so possessed with the forest ardor, that he said, 
'All politics, all discussions, all philosophies of Europe, are so in- 
finitely little in comparison with those trees out there in the West 
Indies. Don't you think the brain is a fungoid growth? O ! if I 
could only find an artist to paint a tree as I see it ! ' In mention- 
ing last this keen enjoyment of his in the earth as it is, I seem to 
have inverted the due order : but I see it as a solid, truthful back- 
ground in his soul of all the tenderness and lovingness, and spiritual 
strength in which he walked about ' convinced,' as a friend once 
said to me of him, ' that, as a man and as a priest, he had got the 
devil under, and that it was his bounden duty to keep him there.' " 

LF.CTURF. AT WELLINGTON COLLEGE. 
yinie 25, 1S63. 

" Young Gentlemen, 

" your head-master. Dr. Benson, has done me the honor of 
asking me to say a little to you to-night about the Museum which 



The Art of Learning. 331 

is in contemplation, connected with this College, and how far you 
yourselves can help it. 

" I assure 'you I do so gladly. Anything which brings me in 
contact Avith the boys of Wellington College, much more of help- 
ing forward their improvement in the slightest degree, I shall 
always look upon as a very great pleasure, and a very serious duty. 

'• I.et me tell you, then, what I think you may do for the 
Museum, and how you may improve yourselves by doing it, with- 
out interfering with your regular work. Of course, that must 
never be interfered with. You are sent here to work. All of you 
here, I suppose, depend for your success in life on your own exer- 
tions. None of you are born (luckily for you) with a silver spoon 
in your mouths, to eat flapdoodle at other people's expense, and 
live in luxury and idleness. Work you must, and I don't doubt 
that work you will, and let nothing interfere with your work. 

" The first thing for a boy to learn, after obedience and moral- 
ity, is a habit of observation. A habit of using your eyes. It 
matters little what you use them on, provided you do use them. 

" They say knowledge is power, and so it is. But only the 
knowledge which you get^^by observation. Many a man is very 
learned in books, and has read for years and years, and yet he is 
useless. He knows about all. sorts of things but he can't do them. 
When you set him to do w^ork, he makes a mess of it. He is what 
is called a pedant : because he has not used his eyes and ears. 
He has lived in books. He knows nothing of the world about 
him, or of men and their ways, and therefore, he. is left behind in 
the race of life by many a shrewd fellow who is not half as book- 
learned as he : but who is a shrewd fellow — who keeps his eyes 
open — who is always picking up new facts, and turning them to 
some particular use. 

" Now, I don't mean to undervalue book-learning. No man 
less. All ought to have some of it, and the time which you spend 
here on it is not a whit too long ; but the great use of a public- 
school education to you, is, not so much to teach you things as to 
teach you how to learn. To give you the noble art of learning, 
wliich you can use for yourselves in afterdife on any matter to 
which you choose to turn your mind. And what does the art of 
learning consist in? First and foremost, in the art of observing. 
That is, the boy who uses his e)'es best on his book, and observes 
the words and letters of his lesson most accurately and carefully, 
that is the boy who learns his lesson best, 1 presume. 

" You know, as well as I, how one fellow will sit staring at his 
book for an hour without knowing a word about it, while another 
will learn the thing in a quarter of an hour, and why ? Because 
one has actually not seen the words. He has been thinking of 
something else, looking out of the window, repeating the words to 
himself like a parrot. The other fellow has simply, as we say, 



332 Charles Kings ley. 

' looked sharp.' He has looked at the lesson with his whole mind, 
seen it, and seen into it, and therefore knows all about it. 

" Therefore, I say, that everything which helps a boy's powers 
of observation helps his power of learning ; and I know from ex- 
perience that nothing helps that so much as the study of the 
world about you, and especially of natural history. To be accus- 
tomed to watch for curious objects, to know in a moment when 
you have come on anything new — which is observation. To be 
quick at seeing when things are like, and when unlike — which is 
classification. All that must, and I well know does, help to make 
a boy shrevyd, earnest, accurate, ready for whatever may happen. 
When we were little and good, a long time ago, we used to have 
a jolly old book called ' Evenings at Home,' in which was a great 
story called Eyes and No Eyes, and that story was of more use to 
me than any dozen other stories I ever read. 

" A regular old-fashioned formal story it is, but a right good one, 
and thus it begins : — 

" ' Well, Robert, where have you been walking this afternoon ? ' 
said Mr. Andrews, to one of his pupils, at the close of a holiday. 
Oh, Robert had been to Broom Heath, and round to Campmount, 
and home through the meadows. But it was very dull, he hardly 
saw a single person. He had rather by half have gone by the 
turnpike road. 

" But where is William ? 

" Oh, William started with him, but he was so tedious, always 
stopping to look at this thing and that, that he would rather walk 
alone, and so went on. 

" Presently in comes Master William, dressed no doubt as we 
wretched boys used to be forty years ago, frill collar, and tight 
skeleton monkey jacket, and tight trousers buttoned over it, and 
not down to his ankles — a pair of low shoes — which always came 
off if stept into heavy ground — and terribly dirty and wet he is, 
but he never had such a pleasant walk in his life, and has brought 
home a handkerchief full of curiosities. 

" He has got a piece of mistletoe, and wants to know what it is, 
and seen a woodpecker and a wheat-ear, and got strange flowers 
off the heath," and hunted a peewit because he thought its wing was 
broken, till of course it led him into a bog and wet he got ; but he 
did not mind, for in the bog he fell in with" an old man cuttmg 
turf, who told him all about turf cutting, and gave him an adder ; 
and then he went up a hill, and saw a grand prospect, and wanted 
to go again and make out the geography of the county by Carey's 
old county map — which was our only map in those days ; and be- 
cause the place was called Campmount, he looked for a Roman 
camp and found one ; and then he went to the ruin, and saw 
twenty things more, and so on, and so on, till he had brought home 
curiosities enough and thoughts enough to last him a week. 



Eyes and No Eyes. 2)2)o 

"Whereon Mr. Andrews, who seems a sensible old gentleman 
enough, tells him all about his curiosities ; and then it turns out 
that Master William has been over exactly the same ground as 
Master Robert, who saw nothing at all. 

" Whereon says Mr. Andrews, wisel}- enough in his solemn, old- 
fashioned way, ' So it is. One man walks through the world with 
his eyes open, and another with them shut ; and upon this difference 
depends all the superiority of knowledge which one acquires over 
the other. 1 have known sailors who have been in all the quarters 
of the world, and could tell you nothing but the signs of the tippling 
houses, and the price and quality of the liquor. On the other hand, 
Franklin could not cross the Channel without making observations 
useful to mankind. While many a vacant thoughtless person is 
whirled througli Europe without gaining a single idea worth cross- 
ing the street for, the observing eye and inquiring mind find matter 
of improvement and delight in every ramble. Do you then, William, 
continue to make use of your eyes ; and ,you, Robert, learn that 
eyes were given you to use.' 

"And when I read that story as a little boy, I said to myself, I 
will be Mr. Eyes ; I will not be Mr. No Eyes, and Mr. Eyes I have 
tried to be ever since ; and Mr. Eyes, I advise you, every one of 
you, to be, if you wish to be happy and successful. 

"Ah, my dear boys, if you knew the idle, vacant, useless hfe 
which too many young men lead when their day's work is done, 
and done spiritlessly, and therefore done ill, having nothing to fall 
back on but the theatre, or billiards, or the gossip at their club, or 
if they be out in a hot country, everlasting pale ale ; and con- 
tinually tempted to sin, and shame, and ruin by their own idleness, 
while they miss opportunities of making valuable discoveries, of 
distinguishing themselves, and helping themselves forward in life ; 
then you would make it a duty to get a habit of observing, no 
matter what you observe, and of having at least some healthy and 
rational pursuit with which to fill up your leisure hours. 

" The study of natural history, of antiquities, of geography, of 
chemistry, any study which will occupy your minds, may be the 
means, whether out on some foreign station, or home here at work 
in London, of keeping you out of temptation and misery, of which, 
thank Ood, you as yet know nothing. 

" I am happy to hear that there are many of you who don't need 
this advice, some who are working well at chemistry, some who 
have already begun to use your eyes, and to make collections of 
plants, insects, and birds' eggs. 

" That is good as far as it goes. As for bird-nesting, I think it a 
manly and excellent pursuit;* no one has worked harder at it 

* lie never allowed his own boys to take nests, or more than one, or at most 
two eggs out of a nest where there were several, so that the mother bird might 
not miss them. 



334 Charles Kings ley. 

than I, when I was young, or should hke better to go bird-nesting 
now, if I was not getting rather too stiff and heavy to bark up to a 
hawk's nest. 

" But see. Because every boy collects for himself, there is a great 
deal of unnecessary destruction of eggs, especially of the small soft- 
billed birds, which are easiest got, and are the very ones which 
ought to be spared, on account of their great usefulness to the 
farmer in destroying insects ; and next — Pray, where will nine-tenths 
of those eggs be seen a few days hence?, smashed, and in the dust- 
hole, and so of the insects and plants. 

"Now it seems to me, that if fellows were collecting for a Col- 
lege Museum, instead of every one for himself, it would save a great 
deal of waste, and save the things themselves likewise. 

" As for a fellow hking to say, 'I have got this, and 1 will keep 
It to myself, I like to have a better collection than any one else,' 
that is natural enough ; but like a great many natural things, rather 
a low feeling, if you will excuse my saying so. Which is better, to 
keep a thing to yourselves, locked up in your own drawers, or to 
put them into the common stock, for the pleasure of every one ? 
and which is really more honor to you, to be able to say to two or 
three of your friends, ' I have got an egg which you have not,' or to 
have the ^gg^ or whatever else it may be, in a public collection, to 
be seen by every one, by boys, years hence, after you are grown up ? 
For myself, I can't think of a better way of keeping up a corporate 
feeling in the college, and binding the different generations, as they 
succeed each other, together in one, than a museum of this kind, 
in which boys should see the names of those who have gone before 
them, as having presented this or that curious object. 

" So strongly do I feel it, that I have asked Dr. Benson's leave 
to give two prizes every year. One for the most rare and curious 
thing of any kind — whether in natural history, geology, antiquities, 
or anything else fit for a museum, which has been bond fide found 
by the boy himself; and' a second prize for the most curious thing 
contributed by a boy, never mind how he has got it, provided only 
that he has not bought it, for against that there are objections. 
That would give the boys with plenty of money a chance which the 
others had not. 

" But there are so many of you who have relations abroad, or in the 
country, that you will be able to obtain from them rare and curious 
objects which you could not collect yourselves, and I advise you 
to turn sturdy beggars, and get hold (by all fair means) of anything 
and everything worth putting in the Museum, and out of which you 
can coax or beg anybody whatsoever, old or young. 
' • ' And, mind, you will have help. I myself am ready to give as 
many curious things as I can, out of my own collection ; and if 
this Museum had been started ten or twenty years ago, I could 
have given 3^ou a great deal more, but my collections have been 



Holidays and hozv to Employ Them. 335 

too much and often spoilt and broken, and at last the remnant 
given away in despair, just because I had no museum to ]xit them 
in. If there had been one where I was at school, 1 could have 
saved for it hundreds of different things which are now in dust- 
holes in half-a-dozen counties, and also should have had the heart 
to collect many things which I have let pass me, simply because 
I did not care to keep them, having nowhere to put them, and so 
it will be with you. 

" I only mention myself as an example of what I have been 
saying. But it is not to me merely that you must look for help. I 
am happy to say that you will be helped by many (I believe) real 
men of science, who will send the Museum such things as are wanted 
to start it well. To start it well with ' Typical Forms,' by which 
you can arrange and classify what you find. They will as it were 
stake out the ground for you, and you must fill up the gaps, and I 
don't doubt you will do it, and well. 

" I am sure you can, if you will see now here is an opportunity 
of making a beginning — during the next vacation. 

" Dr. Benson has said that he will be ready to receive contribu- 
tions from scientific men after the holidays. But he has guaranteed 
for you in return, that some of you, at least, will begin collecting 
for the museum during the holidays. 

" What can you do better ? I am sure your holidays would be 
much happier for it. I don't think boys' holidays are in general so 
very happy. Mine used to be : but why ? Because the moment 
I got hoiue, I went on with the same work in which I employed 
every half-holiday : natural history and geology. But many boys 
seem to me in the holidays very much like Jack when he is paid 
oft" at Portsmouth. He is suddenly free from the discipline of ship- 
board. He has plenty of money in his pocket, and he sets to, to 
have a lark, and makes a fool of himself till his money is spent ; and 
then he is very poor, and sick, and seedy, and cross, and disgusted 
with himself, and longs to get a fresh ship and go to work again — 
as a great man}- fellows, I suspect, long for the holidays to be 
over. They suddenly change the regular discipline of work for 
complete idleness, and after the first burst is over, they get very 
often tired, and stupid, and cross, because they have nothing to do, 
except eating fruit and tormenting their sisters. 

" How much belter for them to have something to do like this. 
Something which will not tire their minds, because it is quite differ- 
ent from their school work, and therefore a true amusement, which 
lets them cut the muses for awhile ; and something, too, which 
they can take a pride in, because it is done of their own free will, 
and they can look forward to putting their gains in the Museum 
when they come back, and saying, ' This is my holiday work, this 
is what I have won for the College since I have been away.' 

" Take this hint for your holidays, and take it too for after-life. 



^7,6 Charles Kings ley. 

For I am sure if you get up an interest for this Museum here, you 
will not lose it when you go away. 

" Many of you will go abroad, perhaps spend much of your lives 
abroad, and I am sure you will use the oi^portunities you will then 
have to enrich the Museum of the College, and be its benefactors 
each according to your powers throughout your lives. 

"But there is one interest, young gentlemen, which I have more ■ 
at heart even than the interest of Wellington College, much as I 
love it, for its own sake and for the sake of that great Prince be- 
neath whose fostering shadow it grew up, and to whom this College, 
like me myself, owes more than we shall either of us ever repay ; 
yet there is an interest which I have still more at heart, and that is 
the interest of Science herself. 

" Ah, that I could make you understand what an interest that is. 
The interest of the health, the wealth, the wisdom of generations 
yet unborn. Ah, that I could make you understand what a noble 
thing it is to be men of science ; rich with a sound learning' which 
man can neither give nor take away ; useful to thousands whom 
you have never seen, but who may be blessing your name hundreds 
of years after you are mouldering in the grave, the equals and the 
companions of the noblest and the most powerful. Taking a rank 
higher than even Queen Victoria herself can give, by right of that 
knowledge which is power. 

"But I must not expect you to see that yet. All I can do is to 
hope that my fancy may be fulfilled hereafter, that this Museum 
may be the starting point of a school of scientific men, few it may 
be in number, but strong, because bound together by common 
affection for their College, and their Museum, and each other. Scat- 
tered perhaps over the world, but communicating their discoveries 
to each other without jealousy or dispute, and sending home their 
prizes to enrich the stores of their old Museum, and to teach the 
generations of lads who will be learning here, while they are grown 
men, doing the work of men over the world. 

" Ah, that it might so happen. Ah, that even one great man of 
science might be bred up in these halls, one man who should 
discover a great truth, or do a great deed for the benefit of his 
fellow men. ' 

" If this College and Museum could produce but one master of 
natural knowledge, like Murchison or Lyell, Owen or Huxley, 
Faraday or Grove, or even one great discoverer, like Ross, or 
Sturt, or Speke, who has just solved the mystery of ages, the 
mystery after which Lucan makes Julius Ceesar long, as the highest 
summit of his ambition : to leave others to conquer nations, while 
he himself sought for the hidden sources of the Nile. Or, if it ever 
should produce one man able and learned enough to do such a 
deed as that of my friend Clements Markham, who penetrated, in 
the face of danger and death, the trackless forests of the Andes, to 



Darivin Conquering. ^2)1 

bring home thence the plants of Peruvian bark, which, transplanted 
into Hindostan, will save the lives of tens of thousands — English and 
Hindoos — then, young gentlemen, all the trouble, all the care, 
which shall have been spent on this Museum — I had almost said, 
upon this whole College, will have been well repaid." 



TO SIR CHARLES LYELL, F.G.S., ETC., ETC, 

EvERSLEY, April 28, 1863. 
" My dear Sir Charles, 

" I have at last got through your big book* — big in all senses, 
for it is as full as an egg, and as pregnant. But I have read specially 
the chapter on the Analogy of Language and Natural History, and 
am delighted. I had no suspicion that so complete a case could 
be made out. And it does not seem to me a mere ' illustration ' of 
the deceptive kind used in Scotch sermons, whereby * * * * used 
to make anything prove anything else ; but a real analogue, of the 
same inductive method applied to a set of facts homologous, though 
distinct. 

" I am very anxious to see a Museum established at the Welling- 
ton College, for training the boys in the knowledge of nature, and 
in the pursuits of natural science. As most of the boys go abroad 
in after-life, it seems to open a ^reat door for your scheme, of hav- 
ing educated gentlemen-naturalists spread abroad, and in commu- 
nication with each other and with the societies at home, and I shall 
soon go shamelessly a-begging for typical forms of every kind, the 
intermediate gaps to be filled up by the boys themselves." 

TO rev.' F. D. MAURICE. 

" I am very busy working out points of Natural Theology, by the 
strange light of Huxley, Darwin, and Lyell. I think I shall come 
to something worth having before I have done. But I am not go- 
ing to reach into fruit this seven years, for this reason : The state 
of the scientific mind is most curious ; Darwin is conquering every-- 
where, and rushing in Hke a flood, by the mere force of truth and fact. 
The one or two who hold out are forced to try all sorts of subter- 
fuges as to fact, or else by evoking the odium theologicum 

"But they find that now they have got rid of an interfering God 
— a master-magician, as I call it — they have to choose between the 
absolute empire of accident, and a living, immanent, ever-working 
God. 

" Grove's truly great mind has seized the latter alternative al- 
ready, on the side of chemistry. Ansted, in his Rede Lecture, 
is feeling for it in geology ; and so is Lyell ; and I, in my small 

* "Antiquity of Man." 
22 



^^8 Charles Kings ley. 

way of zoology, am urging it on Huxley, Rolleston, and Bates, who 
has just discovered facts about certain butterflies in the valley of 
the Amazon, which have tilled me, and, I trust, others, with utter 
astonishment and awe. Verily, God is great, or else there is no 
God at all. 

" That mystery of generation has been felt in all ages to be the 
crux, the meeting point of heaven and earth, of God or no God ; 
and it is being felt so now more intensely than ever. All turns on 

it So does human thought come round again in cycles 

to the same pomt ; but, thank (-od, each time with more and 
sounder knowledge. All will be ?ll, if we will but remember 
what is written : ' He that believeth will not make haste.' 

" But I ought to say, that by far the best forward step in Natural 
Theology has been made by an American, Dr. Asa Gray,* who 
has said better than I can all that I want to say. 1 send you his 
pamphlet, entreating you to read it, especially pp. 28-49, which 
are in my eyes unanswerable. 

"A passage between me and * * * * (we are most intimate and 
confidential, though more utterly ojjposed in thought than he is to 
the general rehgious or other public), may amuse you. He says 
somewhere, ' the ape's brain is almost exactly like the man's, and 
so is his throat. See, then, what enormously different results may 
be produced by the sHghtest difference in structure ! ' I tell him, 
'not a bit ; you are putting the cart before the horse, like the rest 
of the world. If you won't believe my great new doctrine (which, 
by the bye, is as. old as the Greeks), that souls secrete their bodies, 

as snails do shells, you will remain in outer darkness 

I know an ape's brain and throat are almost exactly like a mart's — 
and what does that prove ? That the ape is a fool and a muff, who 
has tools very nearly as good as a man's, and yet can't use thetii, 
while the man can do the most wonderful thing with to'ols ve^-y 
little better than an ape's. 

" ' If men had had ape's bodies they would have got on very 
tolerably with them, because they had men's souls to work the 
bodies with. While an ape's soul in a man's body would be only 
a rather more filthy nuisance than he is now. You fancy that the 
axe uses the workman, I say that the workman uses the axe, and 
that though he can work rather better with a good tool than a bad 
one, the great point is, what sort of workman is he — an ape-soul or 
a human soul ? ' 

* When in America, in 1874, Mr. Kingsley had the happiness of making ac- 
quaintance with Professor Asa Gray, who among many other botanical works 
had lately published his admirable little book for the young on "Climbing 
Plants." In an important work just published in Boston (1876) on Darwinism, 
the Professor has made quotations from Mr. Kingsley's " Westminster Ser- 
mons." 



Letters to Htixley and Darwin. 339 

" Whereby you may perceive tliat I am not going astray into 
materialism as yet." 

TO PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 

EVERSLEY, June 28, 1863. 

" Don't take the trouble to answer this. In re great toes of apes 
and men. Have you ever remarked the variableness of the hallux 
in our race ? 

" The old Greek is remarkable for a small hallux and large second 
toe, reaching beyond it, and t'.At is held (and rightly) as the most 
perfect form of the human foot. But in all modern Indo-Gothic 
races is it the same ? In all children which I have seen (and I 
have watched carefully) the hallux is far larger and longer in propor- 
tion .to the other toes than in the Greek statues. This is not caused 
(as conunonly supposed) by wearing shoes, for it holds in the Irish 
children who have never worn them, 

" Now surely such a variation m the size of the hallux gives 
probability at least to your deductions from its great variability in 
the apes. 

" Science owes you the honor of having demonstrated that the 
hind hand of the apes is not a hand, but a true foot. Think over 
what I have said." 

TO CHARLES DARWIN, ESQ., F.R.S., &C. 

EVERSLEY, June 14, 1863. 

" Ihave been reading with delight and instruction your paper on 
climbing plants. 

"Your explanation of an old puzzle of mine — Lathyrus Nissoha 
— is a master-piece. Nothing can be more conclusive. That of 
the -filament at the petiole-end of the bean is equally satisfactory. 

" Ah, that I could begin to study nature anew, now that you 
have made it to me a live thing, not a dead collection of names. 
But my work lies elsewhere now. Your work, nevertheless, hejps 
mine at every turn. It is better that the division of labor should 
be complete, and that each man should do only one thing, while 
he looks on, as he finds time, at what others are doing, and so 
gets laws from other sciences which he can apply, as I do, to my 
own." 

TO H, BATES, ESQ., F.R.S. 

EVERSLEY, 1863. 

" There is no pliysical cause discovered by the microscope why 
ova should develope each according to its kind. To a philosopher, 
a hen bringing forth a crocodile would not be so wonderful, as 
the hundred thousands of hens never bringing forth any thing but 
hens. 



340 Charles Kings ley. 

" To talk of its being done by laws impressed on matter, is to use 
mere words. How can a law be impressed on matter? Is it in 
the matter? Is it impressed thereon as a seal on wax? Or even 
as a polar arrangement of parts on a solid ? If so. it is discoverable 
by the microscope. But if 'it' were found, that would not be a 
Law, but only a present and temporary phenomenon — an arrange- 
ment or formation of particles for the time being — not the Law or 
formative cause thereof; and we should be just as far from the 
' causa causativa ' of the development as ever. I hope I am not 
boring you by all this. You will see whither it is tending ; and it 
is the result of long and painful thought, in which I have been try- 
ing to bring my little logic and metaphysic to bear — not on physical 
science herself, for she stands on her own ground, microscope in 
hand, and will allow no intruder, however venerable ; but on the 
nomenclature of physical science, which is to me painfully confused, 
from a want in our scientific men of that logical training by which 
things are rightly named, though they cannot be discovered thereby. 
And this common metaphor of 'a Law imprest on matter' is one 
which must be regarded merely as a metaphor, and an approxima- 
tive symbol, useless for accurate science, or we shall get into hor- 
rible confusions of speech and thought about material causes and 
their limits, especially now when Darwin, &c., on one hand, and 
Lyell, &c., on another, have shown us what an enormous amount 
of the world's work is done by causes strictly material. 

" For myself, I agree with Dr. Asa Gray, in his admirable pam- 
phlet on Darwin, that the tendency of physical science is ' not 
towards the omnipotence of Matter, but to the omnipotence of 
Spirit. And I am inclined to regard the development of an ovum 
according to kind as the result of a strictly immaterial and spiritual 
agency." .... 

We now turn from science to fishing, and venture to insert, for 
those who never met him in his genial merry moods, a letter or 
tw6 written in the joy of his heart when for a short moment all 
care was cast away, and he became a boy again. 

TO J. A. FROUDE, ESQ. 

White Hart, Whitchurch, May 27, 1863. 

'■'• And is this the way you expect to get fishing when you want 
it, axing for it with fierce imi^ortunity, and then running away, and 
leaving your disconsolate partner to terrify himself into fiddlestrings 
with fancying what was the matter? .... Well .... 
but you have lost a lovely day's fishing. The first was not much, 
owing to the furious rain ; but yesterday I went up the side stream 
in the Park, and after the rain it was charming. They took first a 



Toads in a Hole. 341 

little black gnat, and then settled to a red palmer and the conquer- 
ing turkey-brown, with which we killed so many here before. My 
beloved black alder they did not care for — for why ? She was not 
out. The stream was not as good as when we fished it last, owing 
to extreme drought. But I kept seven brace of good fish, and 
threw in twelve. None over \\ lb. though. After two came a 
ferocious storm, and chop of wind to W., and after that I did noth- 
ing. Oh ! I wish you had been with me ; but if you will be good 
you shall come down week after next, and Mrs. Alder will be out 
then, and perhaps a few drakes on the lower shallow, and oh, won't 
we pitch into the fish ? Lord P. is gone to Bath, and Lady P. to 
High Clere So I am going home by mid-day train." 

TO REV. E. PITCAIRN CAMPBELL. 

EVERSLEY, May 29, 1863. 

" By the strangest coincidence, Sir Charles Bunbury, a great 
geologist and botanist, and I were talking over this very evening 
Sir Alex. Gordon Gumming' s toads in a hole. I promised him to 
write to Sir A. on the strength of his kind messages to me, for 
further information ; and behold, on coming home from a dinner- 
party at General Napier's, your letter anent them ! Verily, great 
things are in these toads' insides, or so strange a coincidence would 
not have happened. 

" Now, I say to you what I said to him. Toads are rum brutes. 
Like all batrachians, they breathe through their skins, as well as 
through their lungs. The instinct (as I have often proved) of the 
little beggars an inch long, fresh from water and tadpoledom, is to 
creep foolishly into the dirtiest hole they can find, in old walls, etc., 
where 99 out of a 100 are eaten by rats and beetles, as I hold — or 
else the world would have been toadied to utter disgust and horror 
long ago. Some of these may get down into cracks in rocks, and 
never get back. The holes may be silted up by mud and sand. 
The toad may exist and grow in that hole for Heaven knows how 
long, I dare say for centuries, for I don't think he would want food 
to grow ; oxygen and water he must have, but a very little would do. 

" Accorduigly, all the cases of toads in a hole which I have in- 
vestigated have been either in old walls or limestone rocks, which 
are porous as a sponge, absorb water and air, and give them out 
slowly, but enough to keep a cold-blooded batrachian alive. 

" Now, Sir Alex. Gordon Cumming's toads have puzzled me. I 
have read all that he has written, and thought over it, comparing 
it with all I know, and I think I know almost every case on record, 
and I am confounded. Will you ask him for me what is the nature 
of this conglomerate in which the toads are ? 

" I said to-night I would not believe in toads anywhere but in 
limestone or chalk, i.e., in strongly hydraulic strata. Sir Charles 



342 Charles Kingsley. 

Bunbury corrected me, by saying that certain volcanic rocks, 
amygdaloid basalts, were as full of holes as limestone, and as 
strongly hydraulic, and so toads might live in them. 

''If Sir A. G. C. would send us a piece of the rock in which the 
toads lie, we could tell him more. But that the toads are contem- 
poraneous with the rock, or have got there any way save through 
cracks now filled up, and so overlooked in the blasting and 
cutting, is, I believe, impossible, and cannot be — though God 
alone knows what cannot be — and so I wait for further information. 

"Oh, that I could accept Sir Alexander's most kind invitation, 
and come and see the toads myself, let alone killing the salmon ! 
But I cannot. 

"We must send up one of our F.G.S.'s to see into the mat- 
ter 

'•'Your flies are to me wonderful. I will try them on Itchen 
next week. But I have been killing well in burning sun, and 
water as clear as air, on flies which are to them as bumble bees." 

In the summer of this year the Prince and Princess of Wales 
honored the Oxford Commemoration with their presence, and ac- 
cording to custom His Royal Highness sent in previously the 
names of those on whom he wished the University to bestow the 
honorary degree of D.C.L. Among those names was that of 
Charles Kingsley, who was one of the Prince's private chaplains. 
He had several warm friends in the University, among others 
Dean Stanley (then Canon of Christ Church), Max Miiller, &c., 
who would have gladly seen this honor conferred on him ; but 
among the extreme High Church party there were dissentient 
voices; and the Professor of Hebrew took the lead in opposing 
the degree on the ground of Mr. Kingsley' s published works, 
especially "Hypatia," which he considered " ^« hmnoral book" 
and one calculated to encourage young men in profligacy and false 
doctrine — the very charge, in fact, that twelve years before had 
been brought -against " Yeast " by an Oxford graduate of the same 
party. If the vote in Convocation had been carried in Mr. Kings- 
ley's favor, it would have been anything but unanimous, and a 
threat being made of a " non placet " in the theatre at the time of 
conferring the degree, his friends considerately advised him to re- 
tire ; and he, in order to avoid disturbing the peace of the Univer- 
sity on such an auspicious occasion, as considerately followed their 
advice. The following year some of his Oxford friends chival- 
rously offered to propose his name again for a distinction which he 



Colenso mid the Pentateuch. 343 

would have valued as much as any man living ; but he declined, 
saying that "it was an honor that must be given, not fought for," 
and that till the imputation of immorality was withdrawn from his 
book " Hypatia," he could not even in prospect accept the offer. 

In 1866 Bishop Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford, wrote to ask 
him to preach one of a course of sermons in the University in 
Lent, but he declined that honor too on the same grounds as the 
degree. 

" I do not deny," he says in a letter to Dean Stanley, "a great 

hankering for years past, after an Oxford D.C.L But 

all these things are right, and come with a reason, and a purpose, 
and a meaning ; and he who grumbles at them or at worse, be- 
lieveth not (for the time being at least) in the Living God." 

Again, to one who would have liked to see honor upon honor 
showered upon him — " Pray, pray take what God does not send as 

wi^/good for us, and trust Him to send us what is good " 

And so, when a disappointment was over, he would root out the 
memory of it before it had time to rankle in his mind and sow any 
seed of envy or malice. He lived on a high level, and to keep 
there he knew that he must crush down the unforgiving spirit 
which springs from egotism in the hearts of less noble men. 
Coupled with this, too, was not only his intense faith in the govern- 
ment of God, as shown in the smallest as well as the most impor- 
tant events of life, and in His education of His creatures, by each 
and every one of these events, but a deep sense of his own unwor- 
thiness, which made him content (a word he loved) with what he 
had already as all too good for him. 

Bishop Colenso' s work on the Pentateuch had lately appeared 
and was the topic of general discussion, which led to his preaching 
a series of sermons * on the subject to his own people at Eversley. 
In a litter to Mr. Maurice, he said, in reference to the one on the 
Credibility of the Plagues of Egypt and of miracles in general : — 

" All this talk about the Pentateuch is making me feel its unique 
value and divineness so much more than ever 1 did, that I burn to 
say something worth hearing about it, and I cannot help hoping 
that what I say may be listened to by some of those who know 
that I shrink from no lengths in physical science I 

* " Sermons ou the Pentateuch.'" Macmillan. 



344 Charles Kingsley. 

am sure that science and the creeds will shake hands at last, if only 
people will leave both alone, and I pray that by God's grace per- 
chance I may help them to do so. 

"My only fear is that people will fancy me a verbal inspiration- 
monger, which, as you know, I am not ; and that I shall, in due 
time, suffer the fate of m-ost who see both sides, and be considered 
by both a hypocrite and a traitor." .... 



TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 

September i8, 1863. 

" I am very anxious to know what you think of Stanley's 
' Lectures on the Jewish Church.' I have read them with the 
greatest pleasure and comfort, and look on the book as the best 
antidote to Colenso which I have yet seen, because it fights him 
on his own ground, and yet ignore? him and his negative form of 
thought. 

" I think the book will give comfort to thousands, and make 
them take up their Bibles once more with heart and hope. I do 

trust that you feel as I do about it I have been so 

' run about ' with parish work and confirmation work, that I have 
neglected to tell you how deeply I feel your approval of my ser- 
mons. 1 do hope and trust that they may do a little good. I find 
that the Aldershot and Sandhurst mustachios come to hear these 
discourses of mine every Sunday — and my heart goes out to them 
in great yearnings. Dear fellows — when I see them in the pews, 
and the smock frocks in the open seats, I feel as if I was not quite 
useless in the world, and that I was beginning to fulfil the one idea 
of my life, to tell Esau that he has a birthright as well as Jacob. I 
do feel very deeply the truth which John Mill has set forth in a one- 
sided way in his new book on Liberty — pp. 88-90, I think, about 
the past morahty of Christendom having taken a somewhat abject 
tone, and requiring, as a complement, the old Pagan virtues, which 
our forefathers learnt from Plutarch's Lives, and of which the 
memory still lingers in our classical education. I do not believe, 
of course, that the want really exists ; but that it has been created, 
principally by the celibate misanthropy of the patristic and mediae- 
val church. But I have to preach the divineness of the whole 
manhood, and am content to be called a Muscular Christian, or 
any other impertinent name, by men who little dream of the weak- 
ness of character, sickness of body, and misery of mind, by which 
I have bought what little I know of the human heart. However, 
there is no good in talking about oneself. 

" I am so obliged to you for your kindness to our Maurice. I 
hope you were satisfied with your godson. He is a very good boy, 
and makes us very happy." 



The Waterbabies. 345 

The " Waterbabies " came out this year, dedicated " To my 
youngest son, Grenville Arthur, and to all other good httle boys : " 

'* Come read me my riddle, each good little man, 
If you camiot read it, no grown ujj folk can." 

The " renvoi," in the first edition, was suppressed in the second, 
lest it should be misunderstood and give needless offence : — 

" Hence unbelieving Sadducees, 
And less believing Pharisees, 
With dull conventionalities ; 
And leave a country muse at ease 
To play at leap-frog, if she please. 
With children and realities." 

Perhaps it was the last book, except his West Indian one, " At 
Last," that he wrote with any real ease, and which was purely a 
labor of love, for his brain was getting fatigued, his health fluc- 
tuated, and the work of the Professorship, which was a constant 
weight on his mind, wore him sadly. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



Aged 45, 46. 

Illness — Controversy with Dr. Newman — Apologia — Journey to the South of 
France — Biarritz — Pau — An Earthquake — Narbonne — Sermons in London 
and at Windsor — Enclosure of Eversley Common — University Sermons at 
Cambridge — -Mr. John Stuart Mill's London Committee — Letter on the Trinity 
— Letter on Subscription — Luther and Deraonology — Visit of Queen Emma 
of the Sandwich Islands to Eversley Rectory and Wellington College — The 
Mammoth on Ivory — Death of King Leopold — Lines written at Windsor 
Castle. 

The severe illness and great physical depression with which this 
year began were a bad preparation for the storm of controversy 
which burst upon Mr. Kingsley, and which eventually produced 
Dr. Newman's famous " Apologia pro vita sua." That controversy 
is before the world, and no allusion would be made to it in these 
pages, but^rom the fear that silence might be misconstrued into a 
tacit acknowledgment of defeat on the main question. This fact, 
however, may be mentioned, that information conveyed to Mr. 
Kingsley that Dr. Newman was in bad health, depressed, and 
averse from polemical discussion, coupled with Dr. Newman's own 
words in the early part of the correspondence, in which he seemed 
to deprecate controversy, appealed irresistibly to Mr. Kingsley' s 
consideration, and put him to a great disadvantage in the issue. 
Still throughout there were many who held with him — among them 
some personal- friends in the Roman Catholic Church. Many 
private letters, too, of generous sympathy from strangers came to 
cheer him on — some from laymen — some from clergymen — some 
even from workingmen, who having come in contact with the teach- 
ing of Roman Catholic priests, knew the truth of Mr. Kingsley's 
statements. Last but not least, a pamphlet was published by the 
Rev. Frederick Meyrick, entkled, "But is not Kingsley right after 
all ?" This pamphlet was never answered. 

For the right understanding of this controversy, it cannot be too 



Going to Spain with Mr. Fro^cde. 2>A7' 

strongly insisted upon, that it was for truth and truth only that Mr. 
Kingsley craved and had fought. The main point at issue was not 
the personal integrity of Dr. Newman, but the question Avhether 
the Roman Catholic priesthood are encouraged or discouraged to 
pursue "Truth for its own -sake." While no one more fully ac- 
knowledged the genius and power of his opponent than Mr. Kings- 
ley himself, or was more ready to confess that he had " crossed 
swords with one who was too strong for him," yet he always felt that 
the general position which he had taken up against the policy of 
the Roman Catholic Church, remained unshaken. 

" It was his righteous indignation," says Dean Stanle)', " against 
what seemed to him the gloriiication of a tortuous and ambiguous 
policy, which betrayed him into the only personal controversy in 
which he was ever entangled, and in which, matched in unequal 
conflict with the most subtle and dexterous controversialist of 
modern times, it is not surprising that for the moment he was 
apparently worsted, whatever we may think of the ultimate issues 
that were raised in the struggle, and whatever may be the total 
results of our experiences, before and after, on the main question 
over which the combat was fought — on the relation of the human 
conscience to truth or to authority." 

For more than a year past Mr. Kingsley had been suffering from 
chronic illness increased by overwork of brain, and a thorough 
rest and change of air had long been seriously urged upon him by 
his kind friend, Sir James Clarke. At this moment, Mr. Froude, 
who was going to Spain to look over MSS. in connection with his 
Historical work, invited him to go with him, to which he answers : — 

" This is too delightful. I had meant to offer myself to you, but 
my courage failed; but when you propose what can I do but ac- 
cept ? . . , I am ready, for my part, not only to go to Mad- 
rid, but on by mail to Alicant, and then by steamer to Gibraltar, 
via Carthagena and Malaga, coming home by sea. I have always 
felt that one good sea voyage would add ten years to my life. All 
my friends say, go, but I must not be the least burden to you. 
Remember that I can amuse myself in any hedge, with plants and 
insects and a cigar, and that you may leave me anywhere, any 
long, certain that I shall be .busy and happy. I cannot say how 
the thought of going has put fresh life into me." 

On the 23rd of March he started with Mr. Froude for Spain, but 
being ill at Biarritz he did not go over the border. It was his first 



348 ' Charles Kings ley. 

visit to France, of which his impressions are given in his letters to 

his wife and children. 

Paris, Sunday^ Marcli 25, 3 P.M. 

"We. went this morning to the Madeleine, where a grand cere- 
mony was going on, consisting of a high priest brushing people with 
a handkerchief, as far as I could see. Next, to Notre Dame, 
where old women were adoring the Sacrament in a ' tombeau ' 
dressed up with cloth and darkness, two argand burners throwing 
light on it above, and over it a fold of white drapery exactly in the 
form of the sacrificial vitta on the Greek vases, from which it is 
probably unconsciously derived. For the rest, they are all as busy 
and gay to-day as on any other. We met John Lubbock in the 
street going off to examine the new bone-caves in Dordogne. . . ." 

Biarritz, April, 1864. 
" The Basques speak a lingo utterly different from all European 
languages, which has no analogue, and must have come from a dif- 
ferent stock from our ancestors. The women are very pretty — 
brown, aquiline, with low foreheads, and have a quaint fashion of 
doing up their back hair in a gaudy silk handkerchief, which is 
cunningly twisted till one great triangular tail stands out stiff behind 
the left ear. This is a great art. The old ones tie their whole 
heads up in the handkerchief and look very pretty, but browner 
than apes from wearing no bonnets. 

" I am quite in love with these Frenchmen. They are so charm- 
ingly civil and agreeable. You can talk to any and all classes 
as equals. But, alas ! I have fallen among English at the table 
d'hote. ... 

" . , , After breakfast we generally lounge the rocks till one. 
1 have found some gigantic skate purses, which must belong to a 
ray twenty feet broad ; then luncheon ; then lounge again, sitting 
about on benches and rocks, watching the grey lizards ( I haven't 
seen any green ones yet), and smoking penny Government cigars, 
which are very good ; then table d'hote at six Yester- 
day we hired a carriage and went to the bar of the Adour, and saw 
the place where Hope carried the Guards across and made a bridge 
of boats in the face of 15,000 French. When one sees such things 
— and I shall see more — who dare sneer at ' old Peninsular offi- 
cers?' To-day 1 was looking through the glass at the Rhune 
mountain, which Soult entrenched from top to bottom, and AVell- 
ington stormed, yard by yard, with 20,000 men, before he could 
cross the Bidassoa ; and to have taken that mountain seemed a 
deed of old giants. Behind it were peaks of everlasting snow, 
gleaming white in the glorious sun, and beneath it the shore of St. 
Sebastian and Fontarabia, and then the Spanish hills, fading away 
to the right into infinite space along the Biscayan shore. I shall 



To his Youngest Boy. 349 

go and sit there the whole afternoon. We drove through Landes 
yesterday, too, and saw the pme trees hacked for turpentme, and 
a little pot hung to each, with clear turpentine running in, and in 
the tops of the young trees great social nests of the pitzocampo 
moth-caterpillar, of which I have got some silk, but dared not open 
the nest, for their hairs are deadly poison, as the old Romans 
knew. 

TO HIS YOUNGEST BOY. 

Pau. 
" My dear little Man, 

" I was quite delighted to get a letter from you so nicely 
written. Yesterday I went by the railway to a most beautiful 
place, where I am staying now. A town with an old castle, hun- 
dreds of years old, where the great King Henry IV. of France was 
born, and his cradle is there still, made of a huge tortoiseshell. 
Underneath the castle are beautiful walks and woods — all green, 
as if it was summer, and roses and flowers, and birds, singing — but 
different from our English birds. But it is quite summer here be- 
cause it is so far south. Under the castle, by the river, are frogs 
that make a noise like a rattle, and frogs that bark like toy-dogs, 
and frogs that climb u]> trees, and even up the window-panes — 
they have suckers on their feet, and are quite green like a leaf. 
Far away, before the castle, are the great mountains, ten thousand 
feet high, covered with snow, and the clouds crawling about their 
tops. I am going to see them to-morrow, and when I come back 
I will tell you. But I have been out to-night, and all the frogs are 
croaking still, and making a horrid noise. Mind and be a good 
boy and give Baba my love. Tell George I am coming back with 
a great beard and shall frighten him out of his wits. There is a 
vulture here in the inn, but he is a little Egyptian vulture, not like 
the great vulture I saw at Bayonne. Ask mother to show you his 
picture in the beginning of the bird book. He is called Neophra 
Egyptiacus, and is an ugly fellow, who eats dead horses and sheep. 
There is his picture. 

" Your own Daddy, 

"C. Kingsley." 

" I have taken quite a new turn, and my nerve and strength 
have come back, from three days in the Pyrenees. What I have 
seen I cannot tell you. Things unspeakable and full of glory. 
Mountains whose herbage is box, for mil.es and thousands of feet, 
then enormous silver firs and beech, up to the eternal snow. We 
went up to Eaux-Chaudes — a gigantic I^ynmouth, with rivers break- 
ing out of limestone caverns hundreds of feet over our heads. 
There we were told that we must take horses and guides up to the 
Plateau of Bioux Artigues, to see the Pic du Midi, which we had 
been seeing for twenty-eight miles. We wouldn't, and drove up to 



350 Charles Kings ley. 

Gabas to lounge. Cane and I found the mountain air so jolly 
that we lounged on for an hour — luckily up the right valley, and 
behold, after rochers moutonnes, and moraines, showing the enor- 
mous glaciers which are extinct, we came to a down, which we 
knew by inspiration was the Plateau. We had had a good deal of 
snow going up, but a good road cut through it for timber carts. 
We climbed three hundred feet of easy down, and there it was 
right in front, nine thousand feet high, with the winter snow at the 
base — the eternal snow holding on b)'' claws and teeth where it 
could above. I could have looked for hours. I could not speak. 
I cannot understand it yet. Right and left were other eternal 
snow-peaks ; but very horrible. Great white sheets with black 
points mingling with the clouds, of a dreariness to haunt one's 
dreams. I don't like snow mountains. 

" The Pic above is jolly, and sunlit and honest. The flowers 
were not all out — only in every meadow below gentiana verna, of 
the most heavenly azure, and huge oxslips : but I have got some 
beautiful things — a primrose, or auricula, among others. To-day we 
saw Eaux-Bonnes — the rival place, which the Empress is bedizening 
with roads and fancy trees and streets at an enormous cost : two great 
eternal snow-peaks there, but not so striking. Butterflies glorious, 
even now. The common one, the great Camberwell beauty 
(almost extinct in England), a huge black butterfly with white 
edge ; we couldn't catch one. The day before yesterday, at Eaux- 
Chaudes, two bears were fired at, and a wolf seen. With every 
flock of sheep and girls are one or two enormous mastiffs, which 
could eat one, and do bark nastily. But when the childi'en call 
them and introduce them to you formally, they stand to be patted, 
and eat out of your hand ; they are great darlings, and necessary 
against bear and wolf. So we did everything without the least 
mishap — nay, with glory — for the folk were astonished at our get- 
ting to the Plateau on our own hook. The Mossoos can't walk, 
you see, and think it an awful thing. A Wellington College boy 
would trot there in three-quarters of an hour. Last night, ^our 
comble^ we (or rather I) did something extra — a dear little sucking 
earthquake, went off crash — bang, just under my bed. I thought 
something had. fallen in the room below, though I wondered why 
it hove my bed right up. Got out of bed, hearing a woman 
scream, and hearing no more, guessed it, and went to bed. It 
shook the whole house and village ; but no one minded. They 
said they had lots of young earthquakes there, but they went off 
before they had time to grow. I^ucky for the place. It was a very 
queer sensation, and made a most awful noise." 

Narbonne. 

"We were yesterday at Carcassonne, a fortified place, where 
walls were built by Roman, Visigoth, Mussulman, Romane (?.^. 



Carcassonne and Nismes. 351 

Albigense) and then by French kings. Such a remnant of the old 
tmies as I have dreamed of — now being all restored by M. VioUet- 
le-Duc, at the expense of Government — with its wonderful church 
of St. Nazaire, where Roman Corinthian capitals are used by the 
romance people — 9-10 century. We went down into real dun- 
geons of the Inquisition, and saw real chains and torture rings, 
and breathed more freely when we came up into the air, and the 
guide pointed to the Pyrenees and said ' // 7i y a point de demons 
liV 

" I shall never forget that place. Narbonne is very curious, 
once the old Roman capital, then the Albigense. Towers, Ca- 
thedral, Archbishop's palace — all wonderful. Whole quarries of 
Roman remains. The walls, built by Francis I., who demolished 
the old Roman and Gothic walls, are a museum of antiquities in 
themselves. If you want to have a souvenir of Narbonne, read in 
my lectures Sidonius's account of Theodoric the Visigoth (not 
Dietrich the Amal) and his court here. His palace is long gone. 
It probably stood where the Archbishop's palace does now — oppo- 
site my window . . . ." 

Nismes. 

". . . . But what a country they have made of it, these 
brave French ! For one hundred miles yesterday, what had been 
poor limestone plain was a garden. A scrap or two I saw of the 
original vegetation a donkey would have starved on. But they 
have cleared it all off for ages, ever since the Roman times, and it 
is one sea of vines, with olive, fig, and mulberry planted among 
them. Where there is a hill it is exactly like the photographs of 
the Holy Land and Nazareth — limestone walls with nothing but 
vineyards and grey olives planted in them, and raised stone paths 
about them. The only green thing — for the soil is red, and the 
vines are only sproutmg — is here and there a field of the Roman 
plant, lucerne, as high as one's knee already. I came by Beziers, 
where the Inquisitor cried, ' Kill them all, God will know his own,' 
and they shut them into the Madelaine and killed them all — 
CathoUcs as well as Albigenses, till there was not a soul alive in 
Beziers, and the bones are there to this day. 

" But this land is beautiful — as they say, ' Si Dieu venait encore 
sur la teri'Cy il vicndrait deinenrer a Beziers,^ and, indeed it is just 
like, as I have said, the Holy Land. Then we came to immense 
fiats — still in vine and olive, and then X.<» sand hills, and then upon 
the tideless shore broke the blue Mediterranean, with the long 
lateen sails, as in pictures. It was a wonderful feeling to a scholar 
to see the 'schoolboy's sea' for the first time, and so perfectly, in 
a glory of sunshine and blue ripple. We ran literally througli it for 
miles between Agde and Cette — tall asphodel growing on the sand 
hills, and great white iris and vines " 



352 Charles Kings ley. 

" My first impression of the Pont du Gard was one of simple 
fear. ' It was so high that it was dreadful,' as Ezekiel says. Then 
I said, again and again, ' A great people and a strong. There 
hath been none like before them, nor shall be again, for many 
generations.' As, after fifteen miles of the sea of mulberry, olive, 
and vine, dreary from its very artificial perfection, we turned the 
corner of the limestone glen, and over the deep blue rock- pool, 
saw that thing hanging between earth and heaven, the blue sky 
and green woods showing through its bright yellow arches, and all 
to carry a cubic yard of water to Nismes, twenty miles off, for 
public baths and sham sea-fights {^ ?iau-Tnaelicas') in the amphi- 
theatre, which even Charlemagne, when he burnt the Moors out 
of it, could not destroy. — Then I felt the brute greatness of that Ro- 
man people ; and an awe fell upon me as it may have fallen on poor 
Croc, the Rook, king of the Alemans — but that is a long story, — • 
when he came down and tried to destroy this city of the seven hills, 
and ended in being shown about in an iron cage as The Rook. But 
I doubt not when he and his wild Alemans came down to the Pont 
du Gard they said it was the work of dwarfs — of the devil? We 
walked up to the top, through groves of Ilex, Smilax, and Coronella 
(the first time I have seen it growing), and then we walked across 
on the top. A false step, and one was a hundred feet down, but 
that is not my line. Still, if any one is giddy, he had better not 
try it. The masonry is wonderful, and instead of employing the 
mountain limestone of the hills, they have brought the most splen- 
did Bath oolite from the hills opposite. There are the marks cut 
by the old fellows — horse-hoofs, hatchets, initials, &c., as fresh as 
paint. The Emperor has had it all repaired from the same quarries, 
stone for stone. Now, after 1600 years, they are going to bring 
the same water into Nismes by it " 

" I stopped at Nismes, and begin again at Avignon. We saw 
to-day the most wonderful Roman remains. I have brought back 
a little book of photographs. But the remarkable thing was the 
Roman ladies' baths in a fountain bursting up out of the rock, 
where, under colonnades, they walked about, in or out of the water 
as they chose. All is standing, and could be used to-morrow, if 
the prudery of the priests allowed it. Honor to those Romans — 
with all their sins, they were the cleanest people the world has ever 
seen. But to tell you all I saw at Nismes would take a book. 

Perhaps it will make one some day Good-bye. I 

shall write again to-morrow from this, the most wonderful place I 
have yet seen." 

Avignon, Sunday. 

"We are still here under the shadow of that terrible fortress 
which the Holy Fathers of mankind erected to show men their idea 
of paternity. A dreadful dungeon on a rock. The vastest pile of 



To his Youngest Datcghter. 353 

stone I ever saw. Men asked for bread, and they gave a stone, 
most literally. T have seen La Tour de la Glaci^re, famous for its 
horrors of 1793, but did not care to enter. The sight here are the 
walls — very nearly perfect, and being all restored by VioUet-le-Duc, 
under government " 

to his youngest daughter. 

Biarritz. 
" My Darling Mary, 

" I am going to write you a long letter about all sorts of things. 
And first, this place is full of the prettiest children I ever saw, very 
like English, but with dark hair and eyes, and none of them look 
poor or ragged ; but so nicely dressed, with striped stockings, which 
they knit themselves, and Basque shoes, made of canvas, worked 
with red and purple worsted. There is a little girl here six years 
old, a chemist's daughter, who knits all her own woollen stockings. 
Mrs. * * * * has given her Mademoiselle Lih, and she has learnt 
it all by heart, and we have great fun making her say it. All the 
children go to a school kept by nuns ; and I am sure the poor nuns 
are very kind to them, for they laugh and romp it seems to me all 
day long. In summer most of them wear no shoes or stockings, 
for they do not want them ; but in winter they are wrapped up 
warm ; and I have not seen one ragged child or tramp, or any one 
who looks miserable. They never wear any bonnets. The Httle 
babies wear a white cap, and the children a woollen cap with 
pretty colors, and the girls a smart handkerchief on their back hair, 
and the boys and men wear blue and scarlet caps Hke Scotchmen, 
just the shape of mushrooms, and a red sash. 

"The oxen here are quite yellow, and so gentle and wise, the 
men make them do exactly what they like. I will draw you an ox 
cart when I come home. The banks here are covered with enor- 
mous canes, as high as the eaves of our house. They tie one of 
these to a fir pole, and make a huge long rod, and then go and sit 
on the rocks and fish for doradas, which are fish with gilt heads. 
There is an old gentleman in a scarlet blouse and blue mushroom 
just gone down to fish and I am going to look at him. There are 
the most lovely sweet smelling purple pinks on the rocks here, and 
the woods are full of asphodel, great lilies, four feet high, with white 
and purple flowers. I saw the wood yesterday where the dreadful 
fight was between the French and English — and over the place 
where all the brave men lay buried grew one great flower-bed of 
asphodel. So they ' slept in the meads of asphodel,' like the old 
Greek heroes in Homer. There were great 'lords and ladies,' 
(arums) there, growing in the bank, twice as big as ours, and not 
red, but white and primrose — most beautiful. But you cannot 
think how beautiful the commons are, they are like flower gardens, 
golden with furze, and white with potentilla, and crimson with 

23 



354 Charles Kings ley. 

sweet smelling Daphne, and blue with the most wonderful blue 
flower which grows everywhere. I have dried them all. 

" Tell your darling mother I am quite well, and will write to her 
to-morrow. Tell her I met last night at dinner a Comtesse de M. 
{7iee D — ), the most charming old Scotch Frenchwoman, with snow- 
white powdered hair, and I drew her portrait for her. There, that 
is all I have to say. Tell Grenville they have made a tunnel under 
the battle-field, for the railroad to go into Spain, and that on the 
top of the tunnel there is a shaft, and a huge wheel, to pump air 
into the tunnel, and that I will bring him home a scarlet Basque 
cap, and you and Rose Basque shoes .... 

" Your Own Daddy." 

He now returned to work and letters, and writes to Mr. 
Maurice — 

^ EVERSLEY, Friday. 

■ " I have just read your letter to the Bishop of London. You 
have struck at the root of the matter in every page. For me, I am 
startled by hearing a man talk of the eternity of hell-fire, who be- 
lieves the Athanasian Creed, that there is but one Eternal. If so, 
then this fire is the fire of God — yea, is God himself, whom the 
Scriptures formally identify with that fire. But if so, it must be a 
fire of purification, not of mere useless torment ; it must be a 
spiritual and not a physical fire, and its eternity must be a good, a 
blessed, an ever useful one ; and amenable 'to the laws which God 
has revealed concerning the rest of his attributes, and especially to 
the great law 'when the wicked man turneth he shall save his soul 
alive.' This eternal law no metaphors of fire and brimstone can 
abrogate. But I have much more to say on all this ; only I am 
not well enough to formalise it ; so I must content myself, as I 
have for some time past, with preaching Him whom you bid me 
preach, sure that if I can show people His light, that of itself will 
dissipate their darkness. 

" I am come back (from France) better, but not well, and un- 
able to take any mental exertion." 

Before going abroad he had given a lecture at Aldershot Camp 
on the " Study of History," and preached at Whitehall for the Con- 
sumptive Hospital, and on his return had preached one of his finest 
Eversley sermons, " Ezekiel's Vision," before the Queen at Wind- 
sor Castle, and a remarkable one on "the Wages of Sin is Death," 
at the Chapel Royal, St. James's. Those who accused him of 
preaching a "soft" gospel and an "indulgent" God, would have 
believed otherwise if they had been present and had heard his 



University Sermons on David. 355 

burning words, and watched the fiery earnestness with which then 
and always he addressed a London congregation. 

This year the proposal for the enclosure of Eversley Common 
land was decided on, and was a real distress to him. He regretted 
it not only from a mere jesthetic point of view, feeling that if it 
were carried out the characteristic beauty of the parish he loved so 
well would be gone : but for the sake of the poor man who kept 
his geese and cut his turf at his own will ; the loss too of the 
cricket ground where the men and boys had played for years, 
vexed him. " Eversley will no longer be the same Eversley to 
me." It was a wound to his heart which never healed. 

He was busy in the autumn preparing his university sermons on 
David, having been selected as one of the preachers at Cambridge 
for 1865, and in a letter to Mr. Maurice he speaks of his work : 

" I have read with delight your words in ' Macmillan ' on the 
Pope's letter. I am sure that you are right, and that the most im- 
portant lesson to be drawn from it is the one which you point out. It 
is that longing for unity which he has outraged — the aspiration which 
is working, I verily believe, in all thinking hearts, which one thrusts 
away fiercely at times as impossible and a phantom, and finds one- 
self at once so much meaner, more worldly, more careless of every- 
thing worth having, that one has to go back again to the old 
dream. 

" But what I feel you have taught me, and which is invaluable to 
me in writing these University sermons, from which God send me 
good deliverance, is, that we need not make the unity from doctrines 
or systems, but preach the fact that the unity is made by and in the 
perpetual government of the Living Christ. 

" And I do see, that the mediaeval clergy preached that, con- 
fusedly of course, but with a clearness and strength to which neither 
we nor the modern Papists have attained. They preach their own 
kingdom, we a scheme of salvation. From both I take refuge 
more and more where you have taught me to go — to the plain words 
of Scripture, as interpreting the facts about me. 

" Wish me well through these sermons. They lie heavy on my 
sinful soul." 

When the Christmas vacation was over he went up to Cambridge 
to give these sermons. St. Mary's was crowded with undergradu- 
ates long before the services began, and he felt the responsibility a 
heavy one. The subject chosen was "David," and the series was 
published under that title. 



356 Charles Kings ley. 

The letters of 1865 that have been recovered are few. He was 
so broken in strength, that to get through the duties of his professor- 
ship and his parish was as much, nay, more than he could manage, 
and in the summer he was forced to leave home with his family 
for three months' rest, and settle quietly on the coast of Norfolk. 

TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ. 

EVERSLEY, J/rtJ 21, 1865. 

" I have delayed writing to you. First, I have had a tragedy on 
hand ; next, I wanted to tell you the end of it. Henry Erskine, as 
you I suppose know, is dead at the age of forty-nine. We buried 
him to-day ; the father hardly cold in the ground. His death is to 
me a great sorrow — a gap in my life which I feel and cannot fill. A 
nobler, honester, kindlier man never lived, or one more regretted 
by men of all kinds who knew his private worth. Such a death as 
his draws one closer to the men of our own age whom one has still 
left, and among others to you. 

" I am delighted to see you on Mill's committee at Maurice's 
side. You have done a good deal of good work, but never better 
than that. I wish I were a Westminster elector for the time, that 
I might work for him and with you. I am much struck with his 
committee-list in to-day's 'Times,' so many men of different opinions 
and classes, whom one knew and valued for different things, finding 

a common cause in Mill, R C , and Holyoake, side by side. 

I do hope you will succeed. I am just writing to Mill at Avignon 
anent this noble book of his on Sir W. Hamilton, and shall tell him 
of many things which ought to please him. I answered your good 
friend as kindly as I could, but as I have had to answer dozens — 
that the doctors forbid my preaching. I gave my necessary White- 
hall sermon to the Consumptive Hospital as to an old and dear 
friend ; but I have refused all others. I am getting better after 
fifteen months of illness, and I hope to be of some use again some 
day ; a sadder and a wiser man, the former, at least, I grow every 
year. I catch a trout now and tlien out of my ponds (I am too 
weak for a da3''s fishing, and the doctors have absolutely forbidden 
me my salmon). I have had one or two this year, of three and two 
pounds, and a brace to-day, near one pound each, so I am not left 
troutless " 

TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 

EvERSLEY, May i8. 

" Youl letter comforted me, for (strange as it may seem for me 
to say so) the only thing I really care for — the only thing which 
gives me comfort — is theology, in the strict sense ; though God 



The -Doctrine of the Trinity. 357 

knows I know little enough about it. I wish one thing — that you 
would define for me what you mean by being ' baptised into a name.' 
The preposition in its transcendental sense puzzles me, and others 
likewise. I sometimes seem to grasp it, and sometimes again lose 
it, from the very unrealistic turn of mind which 1 have in common 
with this generation. I want your definition (or translation of the 
formula into words of this generation) that I may tell them some- 
what as to what you mean. 

" As to the Trinity I do understand you. You first taught me 
that the doctrine was a live thing, and not a mere formula to be 
swallowed by the undigesting reason, and from the time that I learnt 
from you that a Father meant a real Father, a Son a real Son, and 
a Holy Spirit a real Spirit, who was really good and holy, I have 
been able to draw all sorts of practical lessons from it in the pulpit, 
and ground all my morality, and a great deal of my natural philoso- 
phy upon it, and shall do so more. The procession of the Spirit 
from the Father and the Son, for instance, is most practically im- 
portant to me. If the Spirit proceeds only from the Father, the 
whole theorem of the Trinity, as well as its practical results, fall 
to pieces to my mind. I don't mean that good men in the Greek 
Church are not better than I. On the contrary, I believe that 
every good man therein believes in the procession from both Father 
and Son, whether he thinks that he does or not. But in this case, 
as in others, one has extreme difficulty in remembering, and still 
more in making others understand, that a man may believe the 
facts which the doctrine connotes without believing the doctrine, 
just as he may believe that a horse is a horse, for every practical 
purpose, though he may have been mistaught to call it a cow. It 
is this slavery to formulas — this mistaking of words for conceptions, 
and then again of conceptions for the facts, which seems our present 
curse ; and how much of it do we not owe to the Calvinists, who 
laid again on our necks the yoke of conceptions which we were 
bursting at the Reformation, because neither we nor our fathers 
could bear it. It was this which made me reject Mansell and 
Hamilton's 'The Absolute' and 'The Infinite,' and say, 'If these 
men's arguments are good for anything, they prove that either i. 
God is not The Absolute and The Infinite, as they assert He is ; or, 
2. That there is no God.' What they are meant to prove really 
being, that we cannot conceive what we cannot conceive, which is 
not new, though true ; and also in Mansell' s, case, that though we 
cannot conceive an ^''^conditional God, we can easily enough con- 
ceive an ///-conditioned one, which, again, though true, is not new. 
It was therefore with great comfort that I found Mill, in his chap- 
ter iv., take exactly the same line against those words ; only, of 
course, with infinitely more force and clearness. 

" I am taking a regular course of metaphysic, and so forth, as a 
tonic after the long debauchery of fiction-writing. I say to you, 



358 Charles Kmgsley. 

once for all, Have patience with me, and 1 will pay thee — not all, 
but a little, and I know you will not take me by the throat. If you 
did, you Avould break my heart ; which could be much more easily 
broken than peo[)le think. If a man is intensely in earnest after 
truth, be it what it may, and also intensely disgusted with his own 
laziness, worldliness, and sensuality, his heart is not difficult to 
break. 

" Poor Spring Rice ! * That was a noble gentleman, and had 
he had health, might have been a noble statesman. I never met a 
more single eye. ' I^ook to the single eye in others,' he once said 
to me, ' I judge of every man by the first question I ask him. 
Has he an ar7'iere pensee or not ? Does he answer what he knows, 
simply, or what he "thinks will do?" If the former, he is my 
friend henceforth ; if the latter, he is nothing to me.' 

"I don't quite understand one point in your letter. You say, 
'The Articles were not intended to bind men's thoughts or con- 
sciences ! ' Now, I can't help feeling that when they assert a 
proposition, e.g., the Trinity, they assert that that and nothing 
else on that matter is true, and so bind thought ; and that they 
require me to swear that I believe it so, and so bind my con- 
science. 

" In the case where they condemn an error, it seems to me quite 
different. There they proscribe one form of thought, and leave all 
others open by implication, binding neither thought nor conscience. 
Thus the Tract XC. argument was quite fair — if its mithor could 
have used it fairly. The Romish doctrine of Purgatory is false ; 
but denying that does not forbid me to believe other doctrines of 
Purgatory to be true, and to speculate freely on the future state. 
So that what you say applies clearly (to me) to the cases in which 
the Articles deny. It applies also to all cases in which the Articles 
do not affirm, e.g., endless torture. 

" Also to all in which it uses words without defining them, e.g., 
the Article on Predestination, which I sign in what I conceive to 
be the literal sense not only of it, but of the corresponding passage 
in St, Paul, without believing one word of the Calvinistic theory, or 
that St. Paul was speaking of the future state at all. 

" But how does your theorem apply where the Articles not only 
assert, but define ? That I want to understand. 

" For myself, I can sign the Articles in their literal sense toto 
corde, and subscription is no bondage to me, and so I am sure can 
you. But all I demand is, that, in signing the Articles, I shall be 
understood to sign them and nothing more ; that I do not sign any- 
thing beyond the words, and demand the right to put my construc- 
tion on the words, answerable only to God and my conscience, 
and refusing to accept any sense of the words, however popular 



The late Right Honoiable Stephen Sprmg Rice. 



Subscription to the Articles. 359 

and venerable, unless I choose. In practice^ Gorham and Pusey 
both do this, and nothing else, whenever it suits them. I demand 
that I shall have just the same liberty as they, and no more. 

" But the world at large uses a very powerful, though worthless, 
argument. Lord **** answered, when I asked him why the 
Articles had not defined inspiration, ' Because they never expected 
that men would arise heretics enough to deny it ! ' I had to reply 
— and I think convinced him — that that line of thought would de- 
stroy all worth in formula, by making signing mean, ' I sign the 
XXXIX. Articles, and as many more as the Church has forgotten 
to, or may have need to, put in.' 

" But the mob, whose superstitions are the very cosmogony of 
their creed, would think that argument conclusive, and say, — of 
course, you are expected to believe, over and above, such things as 
endless torture, verbal dictation, &c., which are more of the es- 
sence of Christianity than the creeds themselves, or the Being of a 
God. 

"Meanwhile, each would make a reservation — the ' Evangelical' 
of the Calvinist School would say in his heart — and of course 
(though I daren't say so) every man is expected to believe conver- 
sion, even though not mentioned ; and the Romanist, of course 
every man must believe in the Pope, though not mentioned ; and 
the reigning superstition, not the formulfe actually signed, becomes 
the test of faith. 

" But how we are to better this by doing away with subscription, 
I don't see yet. 

"As long as the Articles stand, and a:s long as they are in- 
terpreted by lawyers ofily, who will ask sternly, ' Is it in the 
bond ? ' and nothing else, I see hope for freedom and safety, if 
subscription was done away, every man would either teach what 
was right in his own eyes — which would be somewhat confus- 
ing — or he would have to be controlled by a body, not of written 
words, but of thinking men. From whom may my Lord deliver 
me ! 

" For as soon as any body of men, however venerable, have the 
power given them to dictate to me what I shall think and preach, 
I shall answer — my compact with the Church of England is over. 
I swore to the Articles, and not to you. I have preached my 

last sermon for you There is my living, give it to 

whom you will; I wipe off the dust of my feet against you, and go 
free. 

" And therefore I do 7wt care for the * * * * and ** ** trying to 
make the Articles a tyranny, by making them talk popular super- 
stition, because I have faith sufficient in the honesty and dialectic of 
an English lay lawyer to protect me against their devices ; and, for 
the sake of freedom, cannot cast in my lot with * * * *, dearly as I 
love him. 



360 Charles Kings ley. 

" Now, do tell me whether this seems to you sense or non- 
sense, . . ." 

That his mind was deeply exercised at times, the following ex- 
tract in a letter to Mr. Maurice shows : — 

" I feel a capacity of drifting to sea in me which makes me cling 
nervously to any little anchor, like subscription. I feel glad of 
aught that says to me, ' You must teach this and nothing else ; you 
must not run riot in your own dreams !',..." 

This may be a comfort to troubled souls when they remember the 
calm assured faith with which he faced life and death, and when 
standing on the very threshold of the next world, was heard repeat- 
ing again and again, " It is all right — all under rule." Perhaps his 
dearly loved George Fox's words best express the habitual attitude 
of his heart and mind for thirty years. " And I saw that there was 
an Ocean of Darkness and Death : but an infinite Ocean of Light 
and Love flowed over the Ocean of Darkness : and in that I saw 
the infinite Love of God." — (George Foo<^ s Joicrnal.) 

TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 

EvERSLEY, Saturday. 

" Many thanks for your letter. I am very sorry I differ from you 
about Savonarola. It seems to me that his protest for the kingdom 
of God and against sin was little worth, and came to nought, just 
because it was from the merely negative inhuman monks' stand- 
point of the 13th century ; that he would at best have got the world 
back to St. Bernard's time, to begin all over again, and end just 
where Savonarola had found them. Centuries of teaching such as 
his had ended in leaving Italy a hell on earth ; new medicine was 
needed, which no monk could give. A similar case, it seems to me, 
is that of the poor Port-royahsts. They tried to habilitate the monk- 
ideal of righteousness. They were civilized off the face of the earth, 
as was poor Savonarola, by men worse than themselves, but more 
humane, with wider (though shallower) notions of what man and the 
universe meant. 

" As for Luther, I am very sorry to seem disrespectful to him, 
but the outcome of his demonology was, that many a poor woman 
died in shame and torture in Protestant Germany, just because 
Luther had given his sanction to the old /?>, and he needs excusing 
solely for that. I do not undervalue his protest against man's true 
and real spiritual enemies. I excuse his protest against certain 



Queen Emma at Eversley. 361 

fancied enemies, Vv'hich were not spiritual at all, but carnal, phan- 
toms of the brain, and suffered to do carnal and material harm. 
Ever since the 4th century had this carnal counterfeit of the true 
demonology been interweaving itself with Christianity. It had cost 
the lives of thousands. It is so horrible a matter that I (who have 
studied it largely) cannot speak of it calmly, and do not wish to. 
And of its effects on physical science I say nothing here, disas- 
trously retarding as it has been, and therefore costing thousands of 
lives more, and preventing tne sick from being properly treated, or 
sanitary precautions taken. But of this more when 1 have the very 
great pleasure of becoming your guest." 

In the autumn Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands came on a 
visit of two days to Eversley Rectory. King Kamehameha, her 
husband, had read Mr. Kingsley's books and she was anxious to 
know him. She also wished to combine with her visit to Eversley 
one to the Wellington College, of which she had heard much, and 
where it was said if her little son had hved, he would have been 
sent for his education. It was a great pleasure to Mr. Kingsley to 
take Queen Emma to the college, and to point out to her all the 
arrangements made by the wise and good Prince, of whom she had 
heard so much, to make it a first-rate modern school, and which 
were so admirably carried out by the Head Master. Dr. Benson 
took her all over it, and into its beautiful chapel and museum. 
After seeing the boys at dinner in hall, and tasting their pudding 
at the high table, she asked for a half-holiday for them, upon which 
Ponsonby, then head of the school, called for three cheers for 
Queen Emma ; and as they resounded through the dining hall at 
the granting of her request, she was startled almost to terror, for it 
was the first time in her life that she had heard the cheers of English 
public school boys. She went on the playground, and for the first 
time saw a game of cricket, examined the bats, balls, wickets, and 
pads, looking into everything with her own peculiar intelligence. 
After dinner at Eversley Rectory, she drove over again to Welling- 
ton to be present at the evening choral service in chapel, fol- 
lowed the musical notes of each hymn and chant, and was struck, as 
every one was, by the reverent behavior of the boys. In driving 
back to the Rectory that night, she said, " It is so strange to me to 
be staying with you and to see Mr. Kingsley. My husband read 
your husband's ' VVaterbabies ' to our little Prince." Queen Emma 
wrote soon after an autograph letter to Dr. Benson, which \ya3 



362 Charles Kingsley, 

read aloud to the boys, expressing her deep gratification with her 
visit to WelHngton College. At the same time she wrote to Mr. 
Kingsley : — 

November 3, 1865. 

" I have the pleasure to fulfil my promise of sending you a Book 
of Common Prayer in Hawaiian, together with a preface written by 
the Translator of the former, Kamehameha IV., my late husband, 
and king of our islands, and a portrait of myself which will, I hope, 
sometimes remind you of one who has learnt to esteem you and 
Mrs. Kingsley, as friends in whose welfare and happiness she will 
always feel the greatest interest. Please remember me kindly to 
your daughters, 

"And believe me to be, 

" My dear Mr. Kingsley, 

" Yours very truly, 

" Emma." 

On the 9th of November, he went, by royal command, to stay at 
Windsor Castle, and on the following day, while preaching before 
the Court, a telegram came to the Queen to announce the death 
of Leopold, King of the Belgians. Mr. Kingsley had been asked 
to write a few lines in the album of the Crown Princess of Prussia, 
and with his mind full of this great European event, wrote the fol- 
lowing Impromptu, which is inserted here by the kind permission 
of her Imperial Highness : 

November 10, 1865. 
" A king is dead ! Another master mind 

Is summoned from the world-wide council-hall 
Ah for some seer, to say what lurks behind — 
To read the mystic writing on the wall ! 

" Be still, fond man : nor ask thy fate to know. 
Face bravely what each God-sent moment brings. 
Above thee rules in love, through weal and woe, 
GuidiQg ihy kings and thee, the King of kings. 

" C. Kingsley." 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

1866— 1867. 
Aged 47 — 48. 

Cambridge — Death of Dr. Whewell — The American Professorship — Monotonous 
Life of the Country Laboring Class — Penn); Readings — Strange Correspond- 
ents — Life ot Bewick— Letters to Max Miiller — The Jews in Cornwall — The 
Meteor Shower- -Letter to Professor Adams — The House of Lords — A Father's 
Education of his Son — " Eraser's Magazine" — Bird Life, Wood Wrens — ■ 
Names and Places — Darwinism— Beauty of Color, its Influence and Attrac- 
tions—Flat-Fish — Ice Problems — St. Andrews and British Association — Aber- 
geldie Castle — Rules for Stammerers. 

While the Professor was giving his usual course of lectures in 
the Lent term of 1866 at Cambridge, a great blow fell upon the 
University in the death of Dr. Whev/ell, Master of Trinity, and he 
writes home : 

" I am sorry to say Whewell is beaten by his terrible foe. It is 
only a question of hours now. The feeling here is deep and solemn. 
JVFen say he was the leader in progress and reform, when such were 
a persecuted minority. He was the regenerator of Trinity ; he is 
connected with every step forward that the University has made 
for years past. 

"Yes. He was a very great man : and men here feel the awful 
suddenness of it. He never was better or pleasanter than on the 
Thursday, when I dined there, and he was asking me for my ' dear 
wife.' His manner with women was always charming. He was 
very kind to me, and I was very fond of him. 

" Whewell is dead ! I spoke a few solemn words to the lads 
before lecture, telling them what a mighty spirit had passed away, 
what he had been to Cambridge and science, and how his example 
ought to show them that they were in a place where nothing was 
required for the most si)lendid success, but love of knowledge and 
indomitable energy. They heard me with very deep attention. 

He is to be buried in the College Chapel, Saturday 

I am up to the eyes in work, sending round my Harvard ad- 
dress." . . . 



364 Charles Kingsley. 

The Plarvard address alluded to here was on the subject of an 
American Professorship, which had been proposed for Cambridge. 
The following letter to Sir Charles Lyell explains its object : 

Barton Hall, February 18, 1866. 

" I take the liberty of enclosing a broadsheet which I have just 
issued at Cambridge. It expresses, I am happy to say, the opinions 
of all the most educated Cambridge men, on the subject of the 
proposed American Lectureship, to be founded by a Mr. Yates 
Thompson, of Liverpool, and supplied by the authorities of Har- 
vard College, United States. If any of your many American friends 
are interested in the matter, you would perhaps kindly show them 
this broadsheet." 

THE AMERICAN LECTURESHIP. ' 

" I trust that it will not be considered impertinent, if I, as Pro- 
fessor of Modern History, address a few words on this matter to the 
Masters of Art in this University. 

'■'■ My own wish is, that the proposal be accepted, as frankly as it 
has been made. 

" Harvard University — an offshoot, practically, of our own Uni- 
versity — is a body so distinguished, that any proposition coming 
from it deserves our most respectful consideration ; and an offer 
of this kind, on their part, is to be looked on as a ver}'- graceful 
compliment. 

" The objections are obvious ; but after looking them through 
fairly, as they suggested themselves to me, 1 must say that they are 
fully met by Mr. Thompson's own conditions ; by the Vice-Chan- 
cellor's veto, and by the clause empowering either University to put 
an end to the Lectureship when they like. 

" But they are best met by the character^of Harvard University 
itself. Its rulers, learned and high-minded gentlemen, painfully 
aware of our general ignorance about them, and honorably anxious 
to prove themselves (what they are) our equals in civilization, will 
take care to send us the very best man whom they can find. And 
more than one person suggests himself to my mind, whom if they 
chose (as they would be very likely to choose) I should gladly 
welcome as my own instructor in the history of his country. 

" When I did myself the honor of lecturing in this University on 
the History of the United States, I became painfully aware how 
little was known, and how little, then, could be known, on the 
subject. This great want has been since supplied by a large addi- 
tion to the University Library of American literature. I think it 
most important that it should be still further removed by the resi- 
dence among us of an American gentleman. 



The American Lectureship at Cambridge. 365 

"If there should be, in any minds, the fear that this University- 
should be 'Americanized,' or 'democratized,' they should remem- 
ber, that this proposal comes from the representatives of that class 
in America, which regards England with most love and respect; 
which feels itself in increasing danger of being swamped by the 
lower elements of a vast democracy ; which has, of late years, 
withdrawn more and more from public life, in order to preserve its 
own purity and self-respect ; which now holds out the right hand 
of fellowship to us, as to one of the most conservative bodies in 
this country, because it feels itself a conservative element in its 
own country, and looks to us for just recognition in that character. 
It is morally impossible that such men should go out of their way, 
to become propagandists of those very revolutionary principles, 
against which they are honorably struggling at home. 

"And if there be (as there is) an attempt going on just now to 
' Americanize ' England, on the part of certain Englishmen, no 
better defence against such a scheme can be devised, than to teach 
the educated young men of England as much as possible about 
America ; to let them hear the truth from worthy American lips ; 
and judge for themselves. 

" But I deprecate the introducing into this question any notions 
drawn from general American politics, or manners. We have no 

more right to judge of Harvard by our notions of the ' ■ 

,' or the ' Black Republican ' pulpit, than Harvard would have 

to judge of Cambridge by Reynolds's 'Mysteries of London,' or, 

' — '■ .' It is simply a question between two dignified and 

learned bodies. Let it remain as such. There are as great differ- 
ences of civilization, rank, learning, opinions, manners, in America, 
as in England ; and if we are not yet convinced of that fact, it 
will be good for us that a highly-educated American gentleman 
should come hither and prove it. 

" Of the general importance of the scheme, of the great necessity 
that our young men should know as much as possible of a country 
destined to be the greatest in the world, I shall say little. 1 shall 
only ask — If in the second century before the Christian era the 
Romans had offered to send a lecturer to Athens, that he might 
tell Greek gentlemen of what manner of men this new Italian 
power was composed, what were their laws and customs, their 
intentions, and their notion of their own duty and destiny — would 
Athens have been wise or foolish in accepting the offer? 

"May I, in conclusion, allude to one argument, which would of 
course have no weight with the University in a question of right and 
wrong, but which may have weight in one, like the present, of 
expediency ? 

" If we decline this offer, I fear that we shall give offence, not of 
course to gentlemen like the rulers of Harvard, but to thousands 
who care as little for Harvard as they do for our own Cambridge. 



366 Charles Kings ley. 

A sensitive people like the Americans, instinct with national feel- 
ing, among whom news is spread far more rajjidly than in England, 
will be but too likely to take uj) om^ refusal as a national insult. 
The lower portion of the American press will be but too likely to 
misrepresent and vilify our motives ; and a fresh soreness between 
us and Americans may be caused (by no real fault of our own) at 
the very time when we should be doing all in our power to promote 
mutual good will and good understanding, 

" C. KlNGSLEY. [ 
"February 9, 1866." 

The offer was finally rejected by vote of the Senate, to the great 
regret of many leading men in the University, 

The death of Dr. Whewell, the appointment of Mr. Maurice to 
the chair of Moral Philosophy, the discussion of the American 
Professorship, and the happiness of having his eldest son an under- 
graduate of Trinity, made this a year of no ordinary interest, as far 
as Cambridge was con*cerned, to the Professor. 

His yearly residences at Cambridge gave him not only the 
advantage of associating with scholars and men of mark in the 
University, but of paying visits in the neighborhood to houses where 
good pictures and charming society refreshed and helped him 
through the toil of his professional work — to Wimpole, to Ampthill 
Park, and other country houses, where he and his were always 
made welcome. While staying at Ampthill he first saw the pictures 
at Woburn Abbey and Haynes Park, which were of deep interest 
to him, and in reference to this time Mr. George Howard writes 
from Naworth Castle in 1876 : 

" Once I went over the picture gallery at Woburn with him, it 
was a great treat to me, as his talk over the historical portraits was 
dehghtful. He then made a remark which has since seemed to me 
quite a key to the criticism of historical portraits : 'That it was for- 
merly the habit of portrait painters to flatter their sitters by making 
them as like the reigning king or queen as they could.' . . . " 

During his heavy parish work, which was done single-handed 
the greater part of this year, he was raore^than ever struck by the 
monotonous, coloness life of the English laborer, varied only by 
the yearly benefit-club day, and evenings at the public-house. The 
absence of all pleasure from their lives weighed heavily on his 
heart, more especially in the case of the poor hard-worked wives 



Parish Labors. 2)^'] 

and mothers who, if respectable, were excluded from even the poor 
amusements of the men ; and for their sake, as well as for his men 
and boys, he began a series of Penny Readings, which now have 
become so common. It was characteristic of his chivalrous spirit 
that at the first meeting, when the school-room was crowded with 
men and boys, he made an appeal to them for their wives and 
mothers, dwelling on the life of toil they led, and saying how 
anxious he should be to give them a share in this amusement, which 
they so sorely needed. It was therefore arranged that, while the 
men and boys paid their pennies, the widows and poor overbur- 
dened mothers should have free tickets. 

These meetings, in which his parishioners would kindly help him, 
occurred once a fortnight, and though set on foot for the poor, 
brought all classes pleasantly together during the autumn and winter 
nights ; they had music (the best that could be got), the best 
poetry, the most heroic stories. Sometimes he would give simple 
lectures on health ; accounts of his own travels ; and latterly ex- 
tracts from his eldest son's letters from abroad, in which stories 
expressly for the Penny Readings at home were not forgotten. 
Village concerts, too, were given, got up by his daughter and son, 
in which friends from London helped for his sake ; and the sight of 
the well-lighted and decorated room to people who saw nothing at 
home from one year's end to another but a farthing dip candle, 
was a pleasure in itself ; the poor mothers were gratified at seeing 
their sons in Sunday garments step up on the platform to help in 
choruses and part songs, while the young men gained in self-re- 
spect and refinement, by the share they took in the preparation as 
well as the performance. " It was to him most curious," he used 
to say, " to watch the effect of music upon the poor people — ui)on, 
alas ! seemingly unimpressionable drudges, in whom one would 
expect to find no appreciation for refined sound ; " but yet who 
would walk two miles to the village schoolroom on a wet night and 
sit in rapt attention the whole evening, " showing their approba- 
tion of good music, not by noisy applause, but by a kindling face 
and eye during the piece, and a low hum of approbation after, that 
hinted at a deep musical under-current below that rugged exterior." 
Penny Readings are common now, but in his own immediate 
neighborhood the Rector of Eversley took the lead in inaugurating 
these pleasant gatherings. 



o 



68 Charles Kingsley. 



His literary work this year consisted in two lectures on Science 
and Superstition* at the Royal Institution. He preached for the 
first time in one of the Great Nave services at Westminster Abbey,f 
for the Bishop of London's Fund; to the boys of Wellington Col- 
lege ; to the Queen at Clifden ; and his usual Chapel Royal 
sermons. In the little congregation at Eversley for some of the 
summer months, many distinguished men might be numbered ; 
among them were Sir George Hamilton Seymour and General Sir 
Wm. Codrington. 

The correspondence was, as usual, of a varied and singular 
character. One day there came a long letter from a I^ondon news- 
paper reporter, who, in return for some kindly, cheering words, 
revealed the inner life of Bohemia with wonderful vividness, and 
ended, " I have written you a very long and tedious letter, Mr. 
Kingsley, and were I writing to an ordinary man, I should be mad 
to address him at this length and in this vein. But j/<7« understand 
things, and I am almost certain that you will understand me and 
my long-windedness. Thank you again. Think gently of Bohemia 
and its free I^ances." .... 

Another from Brighton, thanking him for " Alton Locke," signed 
" A Chartist and Cabman." 

Again, from a man who had lived abroad, and only signed him- 
self " One who can never forget you," who had accidentally read 
" Alton Locke " "in a time of overhelming misery " — " You were 
the means of saving me from ruin and destruction, to which I was 
fast drifting." 

From South Australia, 1867, a barrister writes, thanking him for 
his " Sermons for the Times," " Pentateuch," and " Good News," 
telling him how they were read frequently by the special magistrate, 
by his brother barrister, and by himself, in remote places, where 
they have no Church clergymen, and the Bishop appoints laymen 
to read sermons. "I could not," he says, " write as a stranger to 
a man who has so honestly spoken to me of my life and its duties, 
presented for the first time in the light in which you portray 
them." .... 

Letters came from China, from the heart of Africa, from the 
other side of the Rocky Mountains — all telling the same tale. 

* Since republished in " Health and Education." 

•j- Th^se sermons have since appeared in a volume, " The Water of Life." 



A Grateful Beneficiary. 369 

One or two found their way to " Charles Kingsley, England," 
many were without any signature — simple outpourings of loving 
hearts, neither written from egotism or from the desire of getting 
an autograph in return. One, also anonymous, dated Glasgow, 
May II, 1867, is so touching in itself and so significant of Mr. 
Kingsley's daily acts of mercy unknown to all but himself and 
those who received them, that it must be given entire : 

"Charles Kingsley, 

" My dear friend, permit me to engage your kind attention for 
a little. 1 often remember you and ' the kindness of God,' which 
you showed towards me some years ago. You found me in the 
way near Hartly Row, a poor, homeless, friendless, penniless 
stranger. God sent you as an angel of mercy to me, a very un- 
■worthy creature. You were, indeed, like the good Samaritan to 
me. You took me to the Lamb Inn, and there, for your sake, I 
was very hospitably cared for. On the walls of a room in that inn 
1 wrote a prayer, which came from the very depths of my heart. 
It was for you, that the Father of the fatherless would make you 
most glad with His countenance for ever. That prayer I have 
often breathed since then. 

" I was not aware, till afterwards, that you were the author of so 
many books, and a person of so great note. I rejoice in your hon- 
orable fame." 

These letters, and many a strange communication that he re- 
ceived, not only cheered him in his work, but gave him fresh 
knowledge of human nature in all its varied aspects that few men 
have, and deepened his own humanity. He little thought they 
were treasured up, to give others some small insight into his great 
work, by one who feels it is no treachery to disclose them now, or 
to mention what he never alluded to in his lifetime ! 



TO MR. T. DIXON. 

EvERSLEY, October 27, 1866. 

" The volumes of Bewick are come, and may I beg you to give to 
the Misses Bewick the enclosed letter of thanks. 

" I am delighted with the new vignettes — all showing the genius 
which shines from every touch of the truly great man's hand. Of 
course, as the happy possessor of a Newcastle copy of 1809, in 
Avhich my father literally brought me up, I prefer the old, untouched 
plates for softness, richness, and clearness. But we cannot expect 
everything to last ; and the volumes which have been sent to me 
24 



370 Charles Kings ley. 

are very valuable as memorials of Bewick, as well as proofs of the 
kindness of people whom I know not, yet respect. 

" I do not quite understand the end of your letter, in which you 
are kind enough to compliment me for following Carlyle's advice 
about one 'sadly tried.' I have followed the sage of Chelsea's 
teaching, about my noble friend, ex-Governor Eyre of Jamaica. I 
have been cursed for it, as if I had been a dog, who had never stood 
up for the working man when all the world was hounding him (the 
working man) down in 1848-9, and imperilled my own prospects 
in life in behalf of freedom and justice. Now, men insult me 
because I stand up for a man whom I believe ill-used, calumniated, 
and hunted to death by fanatics. If you mean Mr. Eyre in what 
you say, you indeed will give me pleasui"e, because I shall see that 
one more ' man of the people ' has common sense to appreciate a 
brave and good man, doing his best under terrible difficulties : but 
if not, I know that 1 am right." 

to the misses bewick. 

" My dear Toadies, 

" 1 received with great pleasure the present of your father's 
works in two volumes. The old edition of 1804 is fresher and 
richer in the printing of the wood-cuts, but this is very interesting 
to me and to my children, as containing so many new vignettes 
which the old edition wants, and which all show the genius which 
always accompanied his hand. 

" Ladies, it is a great boon from God to have had a great father. 
And I had no idea what a noble specimen of an Englishman he was, 
till you did me the honor of sending me his ' Life.' The wisdom, 
justice, moderation, and energy of his character impressed me with 
a moral reverence for him, even greater than that which I already 
felt for his artistic honor. Happy are the daughters who have 
sprung from such a man, and who will meet him again in heaven. 
" I am, my dear I^adies, 

" Your obliged Servant, 

" Charles Kingsley." 

to the same. 

April ^ 1867. 

" Mrs. Kingsley and I have to thank you very rriuch for your 
most valuable present of your father's handwriting, and the sketch 
acompanying it. I shall treasure them and pass them on as heir- 
looms to my eldest son, who has been brought up on your father's 
books, and is going out some day as a naturalist and a settler. 

" But, my dear madam, you must not speak of my approving 
your father's labors, you must speak of me as one who has been 
you father's loving, reverent pupil, as was my father before me. 



yews Tin and yews Houses. 371 

" When your father's book of birds first came out, my father, 
then a young hunting squire, in the New Poorest, Hampshire, saw 
the book in London, and bought at once the beautiful old copy 
which has been the text-book of my boyhood. He, a sportsman 
and field naturalist, loved it and carried it with him up and down 
in days when no scientific knowledge could be had, from 1805-1820, 
and when he was laughed at in the New Forest for having bought 
a book about '■ dicky birdies,' till his fellow squires borrowing his 
copy, agreed that it was the most clever book they had ever seen, 
and a revelation to them, who had had these phenomena under 
their eyes all their lives and never noticed them. 

" That my father should have introduced into the south of Eng- 
land; first, your father's book, and have known his great pupil, 
Yarrell, in person, is to me a great pleasure. Yarrell and my father 
were friends from youth till death, and if my father had been alive 
now he would have joined me in respect and affection for the 
daughters of the great and wise Bewick." 

TO PROFESSOR MAX MtJLLER. 

EvERSLEY, November i6, 1866. 
" Dearest Max, 

" Story, bless you, I have none to tell you, save that in Corn- 
wall these same old stories, of Jews' tin and Jews' houses, got from 
the miners, filled my young brains with unhistoric nonsense, like 
]Vlara-zion, the bitterness of Zion ; which town the old folk, I can't 
tell why, call Market Jew still. 

" That the Jews came to Cornwall as slaves after the destruction 
of Jei-usalem is possible and probable enough, but I know of no 
evidence. That the old smelting works, and the tin found in them 
was immemorially called Jews' tin and Jews' houses is well known ; 
also that they are of an awful antiquity. Market Jew, as a town, is a 
xidMXQ you must explain. That is a.U. I put it in ' Yeast,' into the 
mouth of a Cornish ex-miner. But I am glad you are taking the 
matter up, and working Carew, Polwhele, and Borlase. I should 
exi)ect you to find the root of the myths in that fruitful mother of 
wind eggs, the sixteenth century. 

" My dear Max, what great things have happened for Germany, 
and what great men your Prussians have shown themselves. Much 
as 1 was wroth with them about Schleswig-Holstein, I can only see 
in this last campaign a great necessary move for the physical 
safety of every North German household, and the honor of every 
North German woman. To allow the possibility of a second 
1807-1812 to remain, when it could be averted by any amount of 
fighting, were sin and shame, and had I been a Prussian I would 
have gone down to Sadowa as a sacred duty to wife and child and 
fatherland. 

" I am reading much German now, and shall need to ask you 



2)"] 2 Charles Kings ley. 

questions, specially about the reaction from 1815-1820, and the 
alleged treachery of the princes in not granting constitutions. 

'■'• Meanwhile, tell me if Gervinus, whom I am studying on that 
matter, is worthy of credit, and recommend me a good author, 
specially one who has thought before he wrote, and, not like 
Gervinus, thought in writing, to the perplexing of himself and 
reader." .... 

The great meteor shower of November, 1866, was naturally of 
intense and, as he said himself, awful interest to him. In trembHng 
excitement he paced up and down the church-yard, where he had 
a greater sweep of horizon than elsewhere, long before the time 
arrived, and when the shower began called his wife and children 
out of their beds to watch with him. He preached upon the great 
spectacle in his own church and at the Chapel Royal. 

TO PROFESSOR ADAMS. 

EvERSLEY, November 14, 1866. 

"The Jinns* (according to the Mussulman theory of meteors) 
must have had a warm time of it about i a.m. this morning, and the 
Eastern peoples (if the star shower was visible to them) must be 
congratulating themselves that (unless the angels are very bad 
shots) there is a very fair chance of the devil being killed at last. 

" What I saw may at least amuse you. I presume any local 
observations have value, however small. 

" I saw the first meteor about 11.50, i.e., as soon as the head of 
Eeo rose above our rather high horizon. From that time the star 
rain increased till about i a.m., and diminished till about 2.30, 
when very few passed. They went on, 1 am told, till 5.30 this 
morning. I saw no increase or diminution in the size of the me- 
teors from beginning to end. Some of them were larger and more 
brilliant than common shooting stars, but not many. The most 
brilliant appeared of a reddish color, their tails green and bluish. 
They all proceeded from the one point in Teo, only one other star 
(as far as I saw) fell at right angles. to their course, from the zenith 
to the north. I was struck by the fact that they all proceeded in 
quasi-straight lines without any of that wavering and uncertainty 
of direction so common in meteors. Any large number became 
visible only about the zenith, or in falling towards the western 
horizon. 

* The Jinns or second order of spirits are supposed by the Mussulman to be 
many of them kiUed by shooting stars, hurled at them from heaven ; wherefore, 
the Arabs, when they see a shooting star, often exclaim, " May God transfix 
the enemy of the faith 1" — Notes to Lane's " Thousand and One Nights." 



The Star Shower. ■^'■jt^ 

" But the most striking and (to me) awful phenomenon was the 
point of departure in Leo, where, again and again, meteors appeared 
and hung for a moment, their tail so much foreshortened as to be 
wholly or almost wholly unseen. These must have been coming 
straight at us. Surely some may have struck our planet ? 

" The seeming generation of these magnificent objects out of a 
point of nonentity and void, was to me the most beautiful and strik- 
ing sky phenomenon which I ever witnessed. Yet the actual facts 
of their course are far more wonderful and awful than even that 
appearance. I tried to picture to myself the thought and feelings 
of a mediaeval observer, however rational or cool-headed he might 
have been, in presence of that star shower ; and when I thought 
of the terror with which he had a right to regard it, and the fantastic 
explanation which he had a right to put upon it, I thanked your 
astronomers for having ' delivered us by science from one more 
object of dz-ead.' 

" I ought to say that there was here (in North Hants) no sign 
of an Aurora Borealis, which is said to have accompanied tlie star 
shower in certain cases. 

" By-the-bye, what a lecture one might have given (illustrated by 
nature's own diagrams) on the prospective of parallel lines and the 
meaning of a vanishing point." 

TO PROFESSOR LORIMER OF EDINBURGH. 

EvERSLEY, December 17, i866. 

" I received some months since (and I hope duly acknowledged) 
your book on 'The Constitutionalism of the Future.' 

" I laid it by for study, when 1 should have time to do it justice. 
I now write to express my great pleasure, both in the matter and 
the manner of it. The views which you put forth are just those to 
which I have been led by twenty years of thought and observa- 
tion ; its manner, I wish I could copy. In it, clearness and method 
are not merely ornamented, but strengthened by a vein of humor, 
which is a sure sign of mastery of the subject, and of that faculty 
which no education can give, called genius. I wish that in the 
writings of our mutual friend, Mr. Mill, I could see some touch of 
that same humor. I wish that there was any chance of your wise 

advice being adopted; but Mr. 's party have let loose that 

spirit of envy, which is the counterfeit of your righteous idea of 
equality relative, and tempts men to demand that impossible 
equality absolute, which must end in making the money lenders the 
only i)rivileged class. To men possessed by envy, your truly 
scientific, as well as truly religious method, of looking for the facts 
of God's world, and trying to represent them in laws, will be the 
plot of a concealed aristocrat. 1 fear, too, that Mr. Mill and those 
who follow him most closely, will hardly support your method, and 



374 Charles Kingsley. 

for the same reason, Mr. Mill (of whom I speak with real reverence) 
seems to me to look on man too much as the creature of circum- 
stances. This it is, which makes him disparage, if not totally deny, 
the congenial differences of character in individuals, and still more 
in races. He has, if I mistake not, openly denounced the doctrine 
of difference and superiority in race. And it is this mistake (as it 
seems to me) which has led him and others into that theory that 
the suffrage ought to be educational and formative, which you have 
so ably combated. 

" Of course if it is assumed that all men are born into the world 
equals, and that their inequality, in intellect or morals, is chargea- 
ble entirely to circumstance, that inequality must be regarded as a 
wrong done by society to the less favored. Society therefor has no 
right to punish them by withholding the suffrage, for an inferiority 
which she herself has created ; she is bound to treat them as if 
they were actually what they would have been but for her, and if 
they misuse their rights, she must pay the penalty of her previous 
neglect and cruelty. This seems to me to be the revolutionary doc- 
trine of 1 793-1848, which convulsed Europe; and from its logic 
and morality there is no escape as long as human beings are as- 
serted to be congenitally equal, and circumstances the only cause 
of subsequent inequality. I have some right to speak on this 
subject, as 1 held that doctrine strongly myself in past years, 
and was cured of it, in spite of its seeming justice and charity, by 
the harsh school of facts. Nearly a quarter of a century spent in 
educating my parishioners, and experience with my own and others 
children, in fact, that schooling of facts brought home to the heart 
— which Mr. Mill has never had — have taught me that there are 
congenital differences and hereditary tendencies which defy all edu- 
cation from circumstances, whether for good or evil. Society may 
pity those who are born fools or knaves, but she cannot, for her 
own sake, allow them power if she can help it. And therefore 
in the case of the suffrage, she must demand some practical guar- 
antee that the man on whom it is bestowed is not dangerously 
knavish or foolish. I have seen, also, that the differences of race 
are so great, that certain races, e.g., the Irish Celts, seem quite 
imfit for self-government, and almost for the self-administration of 
justice involved in trial by jury, because they regard freedom and 
law, not as means for preserving what is just and right, but merely 
as weapons to be used for their own private interests and passions. 
They take the letter of freedom which killeth, without any concep- 
tion of its spirit which giveth life. Nay, I go further, and fear 
much that no Roman Catholic country will ever be fit for free con- 
stitutional government, and for this simple reason, De Tocqueville 
and his school (of whom I speak with great respect) say that the 
cause of failure of free institutions in the Romance countries has 
been, the absence of the priuiary training in municipal self-govern- 



The Right of Suffrage. 375 

ment. That I doubt not. But what has been the cause of that 
want? — the previous want of training in self government of the 
individual himself. And as long as the system of education for all 
classes in the Romance countries is one of tutelage and espionage 
(proceeding from the priestly notions concerning sin), so long will 
neither rich nor poor have any power of self-government. Any 
one who knows the difference between a French lyc'ee and an 
English public school ought to see what I mean, and see one main 
cause of the failure of all attempts at self-government in France. 
May I without boring you (at least you are not bound to read this long 
letter) go on to another subject, which seems to me just now of 
great importance ? I think the giving intellect and civilization its 
due weight, by means of plurality of votes, as you so well advise, 
])ractically hopeless just now. But is there no body or influence 
in the state which may secure them their due weight nevertheless ? 
I think that tliere is, namely, the House of Lords. You seem (and 
herein alone I differ from you) to regard as the majority do, the Peers, 
as standing alone in tlie state, and representing only themselves. 
I, on the contrary, look at them as representing every silver fork 
in Great Britain. What 1 mean is this, a person or body may be 
truly representative without being elected by those whom they 
represent. You will of course allow this. Now the House of 
Lords seem to me to represent all heritable property, real or per- 
sonal, and also all heritable products of moral civilization, such as 
hereditary inde])endence, chivalry, &c. They represent, in one 
word, the hereditary principle. This, no House of Commons, no 
elective body, can represent. It can only represent the temporary 
wants and opinions of the many, and that portion of their capital 
which is temporarily invested in trade, &c. It cannot represent the 
hereditary instinct which binds man and the state to the past and 
future generations. If you watch the current of American feeling 
and society you will see full proof of this. If the family bond 
should break up there, soon the bond will break up which makes a 
nation responsible in honor for the deeds of its ancestors, and 
therefore regardful of the obligation of international treaties. Now 
a body is required which represents the i)ast and the future, and 
all material or spiritual which has been inherited from the past or 
bequeathed to the future. And this body must itself be an hereditary 
one. Some one may answer, ' Just as much as. Who drives fat 
oxen must himself be fat.' But it seems to me, 

" I. That such a body must be non-elected, to keep it safe from 
the changes of temporary popular opinion. An elective upper 
chamber is a monster which is certain to become a den of dema- 
gogues and money-lenders. 

" 2, That it must be hereditary, because it is impossible for men 
to represent that which they are not themselves. The Peers are 
the incarnation of the hereditary principle. I look on them there- 



■^"j^ Charles Kings ley. 

fore as what they are in fact, not a caste, not even a class, but a 
certain number of specimens of a class chosen out by the accident 
(and a very fair choice, because it prevents quarrels and popular 
intrigues) of being eldest sons. I look on them as the representa- 
tives, not only of every younger brother, &c., of their own kin, and 
of every family which has ever intermarried, or hopes to intermarry 
with them (though that would include the great majority of well- 
educated Britons), but as the representatives of every man who has 
saved up enough to buy a silver fork, a picture, a Yankee clock, or 
anything, in fact, which he wishes to hand to his children. I hold 
that while Mr. Bright may, if he likes, claim to be represented 
merely by the House of Commons, his plate and house is repre- 
sented by the House of Lords, and that if the House of Lords were 
'abolished, Mr. Bright's children would discover that fact by the 
introduction of laws which would injure the value of all heritable 
property, would tax (under the name of luxuries) the products of 
art and civilization, would try to drive capital into those trades 
which afforded most employment for //^-skilled labor, and supplied 
most the temporary necessities of the back and belly, and would 
tend to tax the rich for the sake of the poor, with very ugly results 
to civilization. 

" This picture may seem overdrawn. But I answer, this is already 
the tendency in the United States. The next fifty years will prove 
whether that tendency can be conquered or not in a pure demo- 
cracy, such as they have now for the first time become, since they 
have exterminated their southern hereditary aristocracy, and their 
northern hereditary aristocracy, the Puritan gentlemen of old 
families have retired in disgust*from public life. May I ask you to 
think over this view of the House of Lords. And may I ask you 
how far you think, if it be correct, it can be wisely pressed upon 
all classes, and specially upon the titled persons (there is no titled 
class in these realms) themselves ? 

" Pray excuse the length of this letter. But your book awoke 
such an interest in me — a solitary country thinker — that I could 
not resist the temj^tation of pouring out to you some of the re- 
sults of my years of practical observation of, and pondering on, 
facts." 

In the spring of 1867 he undertook the editorship of " Eraser's 
Magazine " for a few months for Mr. Froude, who had to go to 
Spain to study the archives of Simancas for his history, and he 
seized upon this opportunity to get a few papers on science into its 
pages, and wrote to his friends Professor Newton, Sir Charles Bun- 
bury, and others, begging for help, to which they kindly responded 
— Professor Newton writing on the Birds of Norfolk ; Sir Charles 



Natural Selection. 2)77 

on the Flora of South America ; he himself contributing one of 
his most lovely idylls, "A Charm of Birds." 

TO CHARLES DARWIN, ESQ., F.L.S., F.G.S. 

EvERSLEY, yujie 6, 1867. 

" I am very anxious to obtain a copy of a pamphlet, which I 
unfortunately lost. It came out shortly after your ' Origin of 
Species,' and was entitled ' Reasons for believing in Mr. Darwin's 
Theory' — or some such words. It contained a list of phenomenal 
puzzles, forty or more, which were explicable by you and not 
otherwise. If you can recollect it, and tell me where I can get a 
copy, 1 shall be very glad, as I may specially want it in your 
defence. 

" I advise you to look at a wonderful article in the ' North 
British ' about you. It is a pity the man who wrote it had not 
studied zoology and botany, before writing about them. 

" The Duke of Argyle's book is very fair and manly, although 
he cannot agree with you. What he says about the humming birds 
is his weakest part. He utterly overlooks sexual selection by the 
females, as one great branch of natural selection. Why on earth 
are the males only (to use his teleological view) ornamented, save 
for the amusement of the females first ? In his earnestness to 
press the point (which I think you have really overlooked too 
much), that beauty in animals and plants is intended for the fes- 
thetic education and pleasure of man, and (as I believe in my old- 
fashioned way)., for the pleasure of a God who rejoices in His 
works as a painter in his picture — in his hurry, I say, to urge this 
truth, he has overlooked that beauty in any animal must surely first 
i:)lease the animals of that species, and that beauty in males alone 
is a broad hint that the females are meant to be charmed thereby 
— and once allow that any striking new color would attract any 
single female, you have an opening for endless variation. 

" Altogether, even the 'North British' pleases me, for the writer 
is forced to allow some natural selection, and forced to allow some 
great duration of the earth ; and so every one who fights you is 
forced to allow some of your arguments, as a tub to the whale, if 
only he may be allowed to deny others, while very few have the 
honesty to confess that they know nothing about the matter, save 
what you have put into their heads. 

" Remark that the argument of the 'North British,' that geolo- 
gical changes were more violent, and the physical energies of the 
earth more intense in old times, cuts both ways. For if that 
be true, then changes of circumstance in plants and animals must 
have been more rapid, and the inclination to vary from outivard 
circumstance greater ; and also, if the physical energies of the 
earth were greater, so must the physical energies of the animals 



378 Charles Kings ley. 

and plants ; and, therefore, their tendency to sport may have been 
greater ; and not without a gleam of scientific insight have the 
legends of so many races talked of giants and monsters on the 
earth of old." .... 



^ EVERSLEY, Jjlly 12, 1867. 

" I flee to you, as usual, in ignorance and wonder. Have you 
investigated the migration of the eye in flat-fish ? I have been 
reading a paper on it by Professor Thompson in ' Natural History 
Magazine ' for May, 1865. I took to your methods for explaining 
hojti the miracle takes place ; whether the eye passes through the 
skull, or round the soft parts, is a minor question. Will you kindly 
do me the honor to look at two lectures of mine on ' Science and 
Superstition,' given at the Royal Institution, and reprinted in 
Fraser's Magazine for June and July ? I think you will find that 
I am not unmindful of your teaching. I heard with extreme 
pleasure that your health is nuich improved." 

Trinity Lodge, Cambridge, December 15, 1867. 

" I have been here three or four days, and have been accidentally 
drawn, again and again, into what the world calls Darwinism, and 
you and I and some others, fact and science. I have been drawn 
thereinto, simj^ly because I find every one talking about it to any 
one who is supposed to know {or mis-know) anything about it ; all 
showing how men's minds are stirred. I find the best and strongest 
men coming over. 

" I. Because, being really great men, they know so much already 
which they cannot co-ordinate with your theories (at least as yet), 
and say (as they have a right), ' I will stand by what I do know 
from mathematics, before I give in to what I don^t know from 

.' That last dash is the key of the position. They don't 

know. The men have been asking me questions, e.g.^ 'You don't 
say that there are links between a cat and a dog ? If so, what are 
they ? ' 'i'o which I have been forced to answer — my dear fellow, 
you must read and find out for yourself. I am not bound to answer 
such a question as that. I am not bound to teach you the alpha- 
bet, while you are solemnly disputing about my translation of the 
language. 

" That is what it comes to, my dear and honored master. If 
men don't agree with you, it is because they don't know facts ; and 
what I do is simply to say to every one, as I have been doing for 
three days past, ' Will you kindly ascertain what facts there are to 
be known or disproved, before you talk on this matter at all?' 
And I find, in Cambridge, that the younger M.A.'s are not only 
willing, but greedy, to hear what you have to say ; and that the 
elder (who have, of course, more old notions to overcome) are 



A Visit to Scotland. 379 

facing the whole question in quite a different tone from what 
they did three years ago. I won't mention names, for fear of 
'compromising' men who are in an honest, but 'funky,' stage 
of conversion : but 1 have been, surprised, coming back for 
three or four days, at the change since last winter. I trust you 
will lind the old university (which has always held to physical 
science and free thought, and allows, as she always has done, 
anybody to believe anything reasonable, provided he don't quar- 
rel with his neighbors) to be your firmest standing ground in these 
isles. 

" I say this, especially now, because you will get, I su]3pose, an 
attack on you by an anonymous ' Graduate of Cambridge,' which I 
found in the hands of at least one very wise and liberal man, who 
admired it very much, but knew nothing oi the facts. He showed 
it me, and, in the first three pages I opened at hazard, I pointed 
him out two or three capital cases of ignorance or omission, on 
which I declined to read any more of the book, as coming from a 
man who knew not^ or did not choose to know, anything about the 
facts. 

" Excuse the bad writing. I have a pen, which, if natural selec- 
tion influenced pens, would have been cast into the fire long ago : 
but the disturbing moral element makes me too lazy to cast it 
thereinto, and to find a new one. 1 have, as usual, a thousand 
questions to ask you, and no time, nor brain to ask them now." 

In the summer he was refreshed by a visit to Scotland, which 
included some days of the British Association at St. Andrew's, and 
a visit to M. Van de Weyer at Abergeldie Castle. His visits to 
Scotland were always invigorating and congenial to him. 

TO HIS WIFE. 

St. Andrew's, Sim^iay, September 7. 

" I am looking out on a glassy sea, with the sea-birds sailing 
about close under the window. I could wish to be at home seeing 
you all go to church. Yesterday was a day of infinite bustle. The 
University and City received the British Association, and feasted 
them. Everything was very well done, except putting me down 
for a speech against my express entreaty. However, 1 only sj^oke 
five minutes. After this early dinner a reception soiree of all the 
ladies of P'ifeshire, ' East Neuk ; ' we escaped early. I hate being 
made a lion of, and stuck tight to good Mrs. B. 1 sat at dinner 
between dear old Phillips and Geikie, with Grant-Duff next, who 
has asked me to co»ie on to him if I have time, and kill his sal- 
mon. Hurrah ! To-day to church at one, and dine at Principal 
Tulloch's after, to meet Stanley, who is in great force in his beloved 



380 Charles Kingsley. 

St Andrew's, which he called, in a very charming speech last night, 
his second university. Jowett comes to-morrow with a reading 
party. Blackwood (of the Magazine), who lives close by, has been 
most civil to me, wanting me to come and stay with him, etc. ; he 
has told me much that is curious about De Quincey, Hogg, Wilson, 
&c. He and B. and T. have been trying hard to make me preach 

in Boyd's Church ; but I talked it over with last night, and I 

was glad to find that he thought with me, that it is quite legal ; but 
that there was no need for a sudden and uncalfed for row with the 
Puseyites, I am most careful about all that. Nothing can be 
more pleasant than my stay here has been. But the racket of the 
meeting is terrible ; the talking continual, and running into Dun- 
dee, by two trains, with the steamer at Broughty Ferry, between, 
is too much ; so I have taken up my hat, and am off to Tilliepro- 
nie to-morrow ; with the Provost of Dundee, and worse, the dear 
Red Lion Club crying to me to stop and dine. I will bring for M. 
home, the Red Lion Club card, with the comicalities on it, which 
poor Edward Forbes designed. These dear Scots folk — I should 
like to live always among them ; they are so full of vigorous life 
and heart. I am very well, but longing for the heather. The 
rains here have been all but disastrous. All the corn almost 
is green here. Tell Maurice golf is the queen of games, if 
cricket is the king ; and the golfing gentlemen as fine fellows as 
ever I saw." 



" Best of all," said Dean Stanley in a letter from Dundee, speak- 
ing of the banquet, "was Kingsley's speech, comparing the litera- 
ture of science to camp followers picking up scraps from the army, 
plundering, begging, borrowing, and stealing, and giving what they 
got to the bairns and children that ran after them, ending with a 
very delicate and well-timed serious turn of ' the voice of God re- 
vealed in facts.' " 

Abergeldie Castle, Thursday, September 19, 1867. 

" I am quite unhappy to-day thinking of your parting with the 
dear boy, for I can understand, though my man's coarser nature 
cannot feel as intensely the pang to you of parting with a bit of 
yourself More and more am I sure, and physiologists are becom- 
ing more sure also, that the mother is the more important, and in the 
case of the boy everything ; the child is the mother, and her rights, 
opinions, feelings, even fancies about him, ought to be first re- 
garded. 

" I suppose you will write to me all about his starting ; but I 
have no fear of his being anything but happy, and Madame V. 



Recollections by Prof. S hair p. 381 

says that boys are always so much healthier as soon as they go to 
school." .... 

TO MARY. 

(With a picture of Abergeldie. ) 
" My Mary, 

" This is the real castle where I am, and ia the bottom of that 
tower a real witch was locked up before she was burnt on Craig- 
na-Ban, overhead. At the back of the house, under my window, 
which is in the top of the tower, the Dee is roaring, and the sal- 
mons are not leaping, and a darling water-ouzel, with a white 
breast, is diving after caddises. And as soon as I have had lunch- 
eon I am going to fish with two dear little girls, who catch lots of 
trout with a fly, and a real gilly in a kilt, who, when he and I 
caught a salmon two days ago, celebrated the event by putting on 
his Prince of Wales tartan and uniform, taking an enormous bag- 
pipe, and booming hke an elephantine bumble-bee all round the 
dinner-table, and then all aj3out the house. It is very pleasant — 
like a dream — real stags in the forest looking at you, and real 
grouse, and black cock, and real princesses walking about ; but I 
long to be home again with you all, and that is truth. Love to 
Rose, and tell her to write to me to Aboyne. 
" Your affections pater, 

" C. K." 

He made acquaintance this year with Professor Shairp of St. 
Salvator's College, St. Andrew's, who thus recalls the meeting which 
was so welcome to Mr. Kingsley : 

"Twice only was I privileged to meet him, but of both meetings 
I have a very vivid and pleasing remembrance. 

"The first was in (I think) October, 1867, at Benson's Home, 
WeUington College. Mr. Kingsley came with your son Maurice to 
dinner ; as there was no one there, but Benson and myself, we had 
his conversation all to ourselves. During dinner I remember his 
saying that whenever he was tired or out of spiiits the book he most 
turned to was Carlyle's ' French Revolution.' I expressed some sur- 
l^rise at this, saying that I thought Carlyle's, if a stimulating atmos- 
])here, was certainly not a soothing but a disturbing one to me. Of 
this latter element, the soothing I mean, I think I said I found 
■what came home to me far more in some of the best of Newman's 
'Parochial Sermons' — not those which deal with controversial sub- 
jects, but those which dwell on great universal truths. Mr. 
Kingsley did not quite agree, and we had a good deal of friendly 
discussion arising out of this. 

"Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he told me that he wished to 



382 Charles Kings ley. 

know more minutely about our old Scottish ballads. I think he 
wished it for something he had on hand to write. 

"We sat for a long time in close talk on the ballads ; and I re- 
member being much struck by his acquaintance, and still more 
with his fresh appreciation and insight into them — much keener, I 
thought, than that of most educated Scotchmen. 1 was very sorry 
when the time came that evening when we had to rise and go. 
The only other time I met him was in July, 1872 (I think), at a 
garden-party given by the Dean of Westminster and Lady Augusta, 
in the Precincts. When I met Mr. Kingsley, he came aside from 
the throng, and we walked up and down on the grass for some 
time. I remember wlien I told him I was going to return to the 
Highlands, he said, with a sort of half sigh, ' Ah, yes ! — those 
Highland hills — I wish I were among them,' and spoke with the 
deepest delight of what he had seen of them. 

" Both times, whenever we met, I felt as if he had been an old 
friend. This, for many reasons, which you may guess." 

TO T. HUGHES, ESQ. 

EVERSLEY, 

"What is a National Freedman's Aid Union, which writes to me, 
and which has your name on it ? What do they want to do ? 

" I am very glad these slaves are freed, at whatever cost of blood 
and treasure. But now — what do they want from us ? There is 
infinite wild land for them to till. There is infinite political skill 
in the north to get them and the land in contact. There is infinite 
money in the north to furnish them with tools and seed ; and there 
is, I hope, infinite common sense in the north to punish them as 
* strong rogues and vagabonds' if they won't work. 

" What do they ask our money for, over and above ? I am per- 
sonally shy of giving mine. The negro has had all I ever possessed ; 
for emancipation ruined me. And yet I would be ruined a second 
time, if emancipation had to be done over again. I am no slave- 
holder at heart. But I have paid my share of the great bill, in 
]]arba(loes and Demerara, with a vengeance ; and don't see myself 
called on to pay other men's ! 

" But tell me what will be done with this money when it is got. 
For got it will be, in plenty. Is it to be spent in turning the south 
into a big Hayti of savage squatters ? or as a rate in aid to keep 
these poor wretches from starving, which ought to be done by the 
American government. They have had the gain. They have 
made themselves by this war the biggest and most terrible nation on 
earth. What do they want with a rate in aid ? " 

The following letter may be valuable to stammerers. His own 
great mental suffering from this cause made him most anxious to 



How to Cttre Stamtnering. 2)^2> 

help others. They were the rules he had arrived at in his own case 
lafter years of observation : 



TO MISS 



"You can cure yourself, or all but cure yourself in three 
months, without any one observing it, if you will think over, and 
practice, what follows, and which is a matter of simple common 
sense. 

"And you must try ; or you will find your health and spirits fail 
you. Especially you will find your chest contract from tlie eff"ort 
to force your breath out by unnatural means. 

" Now, you stammer mainly because your upper teeth, like mine, 
shut over the lower ones. Therefore, if you do not open your 
mouth wide, your breath is forced out between your teeth, with 
great exertion, instead of between your lips. If the breath goes 
out between the lips, then the lips can act on it to form the con- 
sonants ; and you can articulate. If not, you cannot. 

" Therefore you must first open your mouth wide when you 
speak. You will be afraid to do so at first, lest people remark it. 
They will not. Every one opens their mouths, and therefore they 
only observe a person who does not. 

" If you find it difficult to speak with your mouth open (and it 
will very likely give you pain in the ear at first, but only at first), 

get a bit of cork, cut it about so thick , and put it between your 

back teeth, and speak so. By-the-bye, if your back teeth are bad, 
you ought to get rid of them, and have false teeth. Toothache and 
bad teeth are very bad for this complaint. 

" You jnust practice reading out loud to yourself, opening your 
mouth at the vowels as wide as you can, and perhaps keeping the 
cork in at first, till you have made a habit of it. Begin by reading 
poetry (which is easiest) the first thing in the morning, and then 
again in the evening before dinner. 

" Read for a quarter of an hour each time. Then try prose. 
But always keep up reading aloud, for months to come, or even for 
years. 

" 2. You must, in reading and in speaking, mind your stops. 
You have been in the habit of speaking from an empty lung. You 
must learn to speak from a full one. For if there is no wind in 
the organ bellows, the pipes will not sound ; and also, an empty 
lung is an unwholesome and injurious thing. For if there is no air 
in the lungs, the blood is not oxygenated. The more you read 
aloud, from a full lung, the stronger and healthier, and more 
cheerful you will feel ; for air is the finest of all tonics. 

" Now how to do this. Before beginning to read, take two or 
three long full breaths. And also (and this is an excellent rule) be- 
fore you begin to speak to any one, especially if you are nervous, 



384 Charles Kings ley. 

take two or three breaths and then open your mouth and speak. 
You will find the nervousness go, and the words come out, as by 
miracle. Remember Balaam's ass could not speak, till his 'mouth 
was opened.' 

" At each full stop, you should stop, and take a long breath ; at 
a colon, a less full, at a semi-colon less, at a comma less still. But 
keep sacredly to the habit of breathing at every stop. Read and 
speak SLOW; and take care of the co?isofia!its, and the vowels will 
take care of themselves. 

"And how to take care of the consonants? ^y taking care of 
the tongue and lips. 

" Now if you will watch any one who speaks beautifully you will 
see, that the tongue lies quite quiet, on a level with the lower front 
teeth, and never flies up in the mouth. You will see also that they 
use their lips a great deal ; and form the consonants with them. 
But you will see also, that they keep the upper lip down and still, 
so that the upper front teeth are hardly seen at all ; while they 
move the under lip a great deal, making it play upon the upper. 
Watch the Bishop of Winchester (S. Wilberforce), or Bright, or any 
great actress, and you will see this. 

" Now, I know (though 1 have not seen) that your tongue flies 
about in your mouth. It did in mine : it always does, because it is 
trying to do the work which the hps should do. So get into 
the habit of determinately keeping it down. You will find it easy 
enough after a while. But at first, when you speak and read, al- 
ways be sure that you can feel your lower teeth against the tip of 
your tongue. I know a beautiful great lady who lets her tongue fly 
about in her mouth, and consequently you often cannot understand 
her. 

"Also keep your upper Hp down, and right over your upper 
teeth, and pronounce the consonants with your lower hp again^'. 
them. Some people will pronounce the consonants against the 
upper teeth, instead of the lip, and let the hp fly up. But it is 
dangerous. One of the most beautiful people I know does that 
when she is excited ; and then you can hardly understand her. 

" Practice this (as I used) before a looking-glass, to see that your 
upper hp is -down tight, your mouth open, and your tongue lying 
low and still ; and after a very little while, you will find it quite 
easy, because it is quite natural ; because your organs will have 
returned to their natural uses, and you will be speaking like other 
people. 

" Lastly, use some sort of exercises morning and evening to ex- 
pand your chest. Raising your arms over your head a few dozer, 
times is as good as anything — or Indian clubs — or something of 
that kind. Anything to raise the ribs and expand the chest. 

" If you will attend to these rules, you can cure yourself. You 
will fail and fall back often. Never mind. You will succeed 



How to Ct^re Stammer ing. 385 

better and better each time, till habit becomes nature. I stam- 
mered far worse till I was five and thirty, or forty almost. But you 
are young, and can do what you choose easily. 

" Do not be discouraged about your lips. You will soon acquire 
the power of moving the under while you keep the upper still, if 
you take pains to open your mouth wide. 



" Sunima : — i. Open your mouth. 2. Take full breaths and 
plenty of them, and mind your stops. 3. Keep your tongue quiet. 
4. Keep your upper lip down. 5. Use your lower lip. 6. Read 
to yourself out loud. 7. Read and speak slow, slow, slow. 



25 



CHAPTER XXV. 



Aged 49. 

Attacks of the Press — Lectures on Sixteenth Century — Mr. Longfellow — Sir Henry 
Taylor on Crime and its Punishment — Letter from Mr. Dunn — Letter from 
Rev. William Harrison. 

The professorial lectures this year were on the i6th century, and 
were crowded, as usual; but the severe attacks on his teaching in 
two leading newspapers in the preceding autumn had inclined him, 
for the honor of his University and for his own honor, to resign his 
post. But as he believed that both attacks sprang from some per- 
sonal feeling, he thought it best, before sending in his resignation, 
to consult some of the Cambridge authorities, on whose friendship 
and impartiality he could rely. They strongly advised him to re- 
tain the Professorship, and on their advice, though the work was too 
heavy for him, he determined to keep it on for at least another 
year. 

That he was doing a work among the undergraduates, there are 
many who will testify ; and at the day when the history of all 
hearts shall be revealed, and perhaps not till then, will it be known 
how many young men owe the first dawn of a manly spiritual life 
to the very lectures on which severe strictures were passed. » 

The Rev. J. PulHblank, of Liverpool, thus recalls his influence on 
him in his own undergraduate days : 

"I revered and still revere your husband, and can never tell any- 
body how much I owe him, until ' in that high place ' I can speak 
out and tell him all. I find a few memoranda, written in a note- 
book at the time, at Cambridge, After a lecture I think on the 
French Revolution or on the colonization of America, — ' We have 
not yet reached,' he said, ' and I know not when we shall reach, 
the true aristocracy, when the apiaroi, the best men, shall have the 
governing of our country ; but thus much I do know, that we shall 
at last come to it, and that we pray for it every time we use the 



Maurice and Kingsley. 387 

Lord's Prayer. " Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done 07i earth, 
as it is in Heaven. Thy name be hallowed." ' The underscored 
words marked by that pause, which was so deeply significant. In 
G. R. Crotch's rooms, conversation arose about the delay of some 
reform. Somebody said ' public opinion ' wanted awakening. Prof. 
Kingsley : ' It is not the many who reform the world, but the few, 
who rise superior to that public opinion which crucified our Lord 
many years ago.' 

'■'■In E. H. Palmer's (now Professor Palmer's) rooms, March 23, 
1868, the talk was about the state of nature and the natural man, 
in which one of us young men propounded some advanced views. 
Professor Kingsley agreed, till an example was given — viz., the 
N. American Indian. Then he said, ' No, no, that I won't grant ; 
the savage is not a natural man, but a most unnatural beast, play- 
ing all manner of unnatural and unwholesome pranks upon him- 
self.' Then 1 remember he went on with what was a favorite topic 
of his, that civilization seems the only natural state for man, be- 
cause savage races are decaying even before civilization touches 
them. He instanced the North American Indian, and said that 
European civilization, bad as it was, did not kill them ; they were 
dying out before ever a white man set eyes on the New World. 

" I had the rare pleasure of sitting next to Prof. Kingsley at 
several of Prof. Maurice's lectures on ' Conscience.' One day, 
Maurice was speaking of the inadequacy of Mr. Bain's theory of 
conscience as tested by facts (Lecture III.), Prof. Kingsley's fight- 
ing blood was evidently roused, and when Nelson's famous signal 
was referred to (it was quoted, though it is not printed in the Lec- 
tures), I had to shrink into very small compass, for a strong right 
hand, shot out straight from the shoulder, passed quite as near as 
was pleasant to my face. I looked and saw that Prof. Kingsley 
could not see for tears. Then Maurice went on to quote Sir 
Hastings Doyle's lines on the ' Sinking of the Birkenhead,' and at 
the end we all rose, as near to tears as to anything else, and cheered. 
Two or three days afterwards, just a few words in one of Prof. 
Kingsley's lectures : ' You who come to this room on the other days 
of the week, know from one who can teach you, and me also — 
(God grant that we may learn) what duty is.' " 

Happily he was well and vigorous this year, and had so much 
work on hand in his parish and with his pen, that he had not time 
to be depressed by the attacks of the press. He began his little 
history of the Hermits for the " Sunday Library ; " brought out a 
serie's of Papers for Children on Natural Science in " Good Words 
for the Young," called, "Madam How and Lady Why ; " lectured 
for the Hampshire Diocesan Society ; preached at Whitehall and 



388 Charles Kings ley. 

St. James's, London, at Sandringham, and at Windsor ; and got 
through nearly sixteen volumes of Comte's works, in preparation 
for his next year's lectures at Cambridge. 

After his first introduction to Mr. Longfellow, whom he was in- 
vited to meet at dinner on his arrival from America, he writes to 
his wife : 

" . . . . I have seen Mr. Longfellow. The dinner last 
night was a success, and all went well. Tennyson was not there, 
but Maurice and the Orator (W. G. Clarke of Trinity), who had 
come all the way from Cambridge. Longfellow is far handsomer 
and nobler than his portraits make him. I do not think I ever 
saw a finer human face. I had an opportunity of'telling him some- 
thing of what we all felt for him, and of the good work he had done 
in England, and to get a promise out of him that he would come 
and see us when he comes back in May. He had three very pleas- 
ant gentleman-like Americans with him. I kept in the background 
and talked to them." .... 

In the spring of this year he was consulted by a friend in the 
army, who was deeply interested in the subject of military educa- 
tion, on the state of Sandhurst. A Military Education Commission 
had recently been proposed by Lord Eustace Cecil, on which some 
officers wished to see Mr. Kingsley placed. This wish, however, 
was not carried into effect ; there being those in the Government 
(at that time a Conservative one) who thought him too much of a 
reformer. 

On receiving a pamphlet from Sir Henry (then Mr.) Taylor on 
crime and how to deal with it, addressed to Mr. Gladstone, he 
writes : 

TO HENRY TAYLOR, ESQ. 

EvERSLEY, December 26, 1868. 

" I have to thank you for your able and rational pamphlet.* 
How far Mr. Gladstone will be able to act upon its suggestions is 
a question by no means hopeful. As against any just and rational 
treatment of crime, two influences are at work now. 

" I. The efi'eminacy of the middle class, which never having in 
its life felt bodily pain (unless it has the toothache) looks on such 
pain as the worst of all evils. My experience of the shopkeeping 
class (from which juries are taken) will hardly coincide with yours. 

* On Crime and its Punishment. 



Crime a7zd its Punishment. 389 

You seem, page 19, to think them a hardier and less dainty class 
than our own. I find that even in the prime of youth they shrink 
from (and are often unable to bear, from physical neglect of train- 
ing) fatigue, danger, pain, which would be considered as sport by 
an average public schoolboy. I think that Mill and those of his 
school are aware of this, and look on it with disfavor and dread, 
as an instinct of that ' military class ' whom they would (whether 
justly or not) destroy; and that from the ' extreme left ' of thought 
you would have heavy opposition on this ground, and also because, 

" 2. The tendency of their speculations is more and more to the 
theory that man is not a responsible person, but a result of all the 
circumstances of his existence ; and that therefore if anything or 
person is responsible for a crime, it is the whole circumambient 
universe. Doubtless, men who utterly believed this might be as 
Draconic towards human beings, as towards wasps and snakes, ex- 
terminating the bad as failures of nature, not as criminals. But the 
average folk, who only half believe this theory, supplement it by a 
half belief in the human responsibility of a criminal, a confusion 
which issues in this : 

"The man is not responsible for his faults. They are to be im- 
puted to circumstance. But he is responsible for, and therefore 
to be valued solely by, his virtues. They are to be imputed to 
himself An ethical theorem, which you may find largely illus- 
trated in Dickens's books, at least as regards the lower and middle 
classes. 

" Hence the tendency of the half-educated masses in England 
will be (unless under panic) toward an irrational and sentimental 
leniency. 

"As for corporal punishment; after having long objected to 
•it, even in the case of boys, I have come round in the last ten 
years to a full concurrence with what you say about it in your 
pamphlet* 

" On one point alone I hesitate to agree with you. Direct 
legislation against drunkenness, as such, will be very difficult to 
work fairly, because drunkenness is so very undefined and gradual 
a state. Where the drunkard has committed a breach of the peace, 
or used language likely to provoke the same, the course would be 
clear. But short of that, I fear lest the policeman would become 
the judge of who was drunk and who sober; a power which would 
involve the chance of terrible extortion of money from moneyed 
men. On the other hand, it seems clear to me that any person 
convicted repeatedly of being drunk and disorderly, is a fit subject 
for penal servitude." 

* In case of boys, however, he oI)jected to flogging for any offences, except 
bullying and cruelty, believing that in boys, as well as in little children, falsehood 
is often the result of the fear of corporal punishment. 



390 Charles Kingsley. 

He made at this time the personal acquaintance of Mr. Henry 
Dunn, of Blackheath, author of several very suggestive works that 
had interested him deeply,* and had the pleasure of receiving him 
at the Rectory. Mr. Dunn thus recalls their meeting : 

" I have a very lively and most pleasant recollection of my visit 
to Eversley. Especially do I remember with abiding interest a 
conversation \ had with your husband during a somewhat length- 
ened walk. We had been speaking of the evangelical party in the 
Church of England, and of the unhappy tendency sometimes mani- 
fested by their writers to revile those who differ from them, when 
Mr. Kingsley, as if glad of the opportunity, enlarged on their many 
excellencies, and on the good they had been permitted to accom- 
plish. There was a generosity of tone in all that he said which 
greatly excited my admiration. Recollecting how often he had 
himself received injuries in that quarter, I felt afresh the beauty 
and force of the apostle's words, 'Not rendering railing for railing, 
but contrariwise blessing.' Passing on we came in sight of a poor 
laboring man employed in field work, to whom Mr. Kingsley called 
my attention, and then said, 'he is one of my dissenting parish- 
ioners, a Baptist and a high Calvinist. He is ignorant and often 
mistaken in his interpretations of Scripture, but I honor him. 
He is a good man, well acquainted with his Bible, and consci- 
entiously living according to the light he has. Why should we 
quarrel ? ' 

"This absence of all assumed superiority over a poor, unin- 
structed, and perhaps conceited man, and the glad recognition of 
good in a class who are often provoking, was to me a very instruc- 
tive example. Some further exchange of thought on the lessons 
God teaches us through humiliations occasioned by the remem- 
brance of past sins and imprudences brought our conversation to a 
close, and left on my mind some very salutary impressions. I felt 
that Mr. Kingsley' s genius and varied talent, his peculiar rapidity 
of thought, and the incessant excitement of his mind, were blended 
with a spirituality far deeper than that of many who, however de- 
voted, are but too ready to sit in judgment on others, and to cen- 
sure whatever they cannot understand. It has often been said that 
the best of a man is to be seen in his books. But it is not always 
so. Admirable as those of Mr. Kingsley are, I, for one, on this 
occasion, could not but feel that their writer had 'hidden life,' un- 
expressed in his publications, which excelled them all." 

In addition to the Penny Readings in the parish, the Rector had 
opened a reading-room for the men, for which books, bagatelle- 

* " Destiny of the Human Race," " On the Study of the Bible," " The King- 
dom of God," &c. 



Memories by Rev. Win. Harrison. 391 

boards," and various games were provided. He made it x self-gov- 
erned club, and sanctioned the managers having in a cask of good 
beer, each glass to be paid for on the spot, in hopes it would pre- 
vent their going to the public-houses on tlieir way home. The 
men drew up their own rules under his eye ; and for a winter or 
two it succeeded, but the scattered population made difficulties, 
and the attraction of seven public-houses in a parish of only 800 
inhabitants, after a time was too strong for the young men — the 
reading-room languished, and eventually was shut up. 

His parish cares were now shared by the able help of the Rev. 
William Harrison, who for six years carried out all his plans in 
church and parish with an earnest devotedness which won him the 
love and reverence of the people of Eversley, while it lifted a 
heavy burden from his Rector's mind, and gave him the intimate 
companionship he needed in their joint labors. For Mr. Harrison 
thoroughly understood him, and was one with whom, notwithstand- 
ing their disparity in age, he could take sweet and bitter counsel, 
according to the mood and circumstances of the moment, and open 
his heart on all subjects, from theology and the great social ques- 
tions which were so interwoven with his religious faith, to lighter 
ones of art and literature ; in whose hands too he could leave the 
parish and his pulpit with peace of mind during his residences at 
Chester from 1870 to 1873. Mr. Harrison soon followed him to 
Westminster as Minor Canon, and was with him in his last failing 
months, in his great sorrow, and on his death-bed. His own words 
will best show the deep love he bore him. 

" Soon after I entered upon my duties as curate at Eversley, in 
May, 1868, old parishioners, who could recall the days prior to Mr. 
Kingsley's residence among them, began to tell me of the many 
great reforms he had effected in the parish in the years during 
which he had worked there. I do not think that the majority of 
his people ever fully understood that their rector's words were 
eagerly listened for in the outside world, and that his name was 
known far and wide. For these things never affected his manner 
towards them. They loved him emphatically for himself: for what 
he was, and had been to them. They loved him because he was 
always the same — earnest, laborious, tender-hearted ; chivalrous to 
every woman ; gentle to every child ; true to every man ; ready 
for, and vigorous in every good work; stern only towards vice and 
selfishness ; the first to rejoice in the success of the strong a4id 
healthy, and the first to hasten to the bedside of the sick and dying. 



392 • Charles Kings ley. 

"He knew his people intimately: their proper callings, tastes, 
failings, and virtues. He was interested, as a matter of fact, and 
not from the mere desire to please, in the occupations of every 
one, and had the right word for each and all. Men at once felt at 
ease with him, because there was such unmistakable ring of sin- 
cerity, such evident understanding of their wants, and such real 
acquaintance and sympathy with what they were thinking and 
doing in all that he said. The poor could tell him freely what they 
felt and what they wanted, seeing at once that he knew more about 
them than men of his social standing generally know. At the same 
time there was a natural stateliness in his bearing which precluded 
the possibility of undue familiarity in any one towards him. He is 
too frequently misunderstood to have been a mere clerical 'Tom 
Thurnair ; a character which he has drawn with great skill, and 
with which certainly he had many points of sympathy. That he was 
unfettered by conventional modes of thought and speech, and 
exhibited at moments a certain element of fierceness, with a detes- 
tation of all cant and unmanliness, cannot be denied. But there 
was, when I knew him, a lofty courtesy and abiding seriousness 
about him, in his very look and appearance, and in all he said and 
did, which marked him out from other men, and secured to him at 
all times the respectful attention and reverence alike of friends and 
strangers. ' I am nothing,' he once said to me, ' if not a Priest' 

" I think that the tenderness of his nature has never been suffici- 
ently dwelt upon. In his warm and manful love of physical strength, 
and for capability of any kind, his imaginative forbearance toward 
dulness and weakness has, as it seems to me, been sometimes lost 
sight of Indeed, even towards wrong-doing and sin, although ter- 
ribly stern in their presence, he was merciful in an unusual degree. 
He would often say, after sternly rebuking some grave offender, 
' Poor fellow ! I daresay if I had been in his place I should have 
done much worse.' 

" It is almost needless to say that every natural object, from the 
stones beneath his feet, to the clouds above his head, possessed a 
peculiar and never-failing interest for him. As he strode through 
the heather, across his well-beloved moors, he would dilate on all 
he saw and heard in his vigorous and poetic way. Nature appealed 
to him from many diverse sides. For not only would his mind busy 
itself with the more scientific and abstruse thought which a land- 
scape might suggest, but he could find all an artist's contentment 
and pleasure in the mere beauty of its forms and colors. He had 
retained the freshness of boyhood ; and approached and noted 
everything with delight. It was refreshing to see how much enjoy- 
ment he could extract from things which most men would never 
perceive or notice ; with what untiring and reverent perseverance 
he would seek to know their raison d'etre ; and with what a glow and 
glory his fruitful imagination clothed everything. 



The Eversley Sunday. 393 

"He certainly possessed the power of investing natural objects 
at the right moment with his own thought, either for joy or pathos, 
in a most striking manner. Thus I recollect on one occasion 
(amongst the Welsh mountains) the eagerness with which he knelt 
down by the side of a trinkling waterfall, and said in a whisper of 
dehght, ' Listen to the fairy bells ? ' And thus, again, I recall with 
tender sorrow an incident that occurred in one of the last walks he 
ever took, on those dark winter days which preceded his own ill- 
ness, and when a great and overwhelming sorrow was hanging over 
him. We were passing along one of the Eversley lanes. Suddenly 
we came on a large tree, newly cut down, lying by the roadside. He 
stopped, and looked at it for a moment or so, and then, bursting 
into tears, exclaimed, ' I have known that tree ever since I came 
into the parish ! ' 

"The Eversley Sunday was very characteristic of Mr. Kingsley. 
It was not to him far above the level of every other day, but then 
his every other day was far above the ordinary accepted level. 
One thing was specially observable about it, the absence of all arti- 
ficial solemnity of manner, and exceptional restraints of speech and 
conduct. Whatever the day might be he was emphatically always 
the same. He would chat with his people in the churchyard before 
service as freely and as humorously as he would have done in field 
or cottage. The same vivid untiring interest in nature which has 
made his rambles by the chalk streams of England, and through 
the high woods of Trinidad, a source of perpetual enjoyment to his 
readers, would flash out fronr him the very moment he left church, 
if anything unusual or beautiful attracted his attention. 

" Yet during service his manner was always impressive ; and at 
time?, as during the celebration of Holy Communion — until the 
recent Judgment he always consecrated in the Eastward Position — 
it rose into a reverence that was most striking and remarkable. It 
was not the reverence of a school. It was evidently the impulse of 
the moment, and being so, was not precise and systematic. Indeed, 
his individuality came out involuntarily at unexpected moments, in 
a way that occasionally was startling to those who did not know 
him, and amusing to those who did. One Sunday morning, for 
instance, in passing from the altar to the pulpit he disappeared, 
and we discovered that he was searching for something on the 
ground, which when found was carried to the vestry. Subsequently 
it came out that he was assisting a lame butterfly, which by its 
beauty had attracted his attention, and which was in great danger of 
being trodden on. There was nothing incongruous, nothing of the 
nature of an eftbrt to him, in turning from the gravest thoughts 
and duties to the simplest acts of kindness, and observation of every- 
thing around him. ' He prayeth best who loveth best all creatures 
great and small.' 

" Many a heart will cherish through life dear memories of the 



394 Charles Kings ley. 

Eversley sermons. It was well that Chester and Westminster 
should grow familiar with the tones of his voice before they were 
silenced for ever. It was well that men and women, among whom 
his name had been a household word, should be able, Sunday after 
Sunday, to come in crowds to listen to his burning words, in a place 
befitting his genius, and his message to them. But to my mind he 
was never heard to greater advantage than in his own village pul- 
pit. I have sometimes been so moved by what he then said, that 
I could scarcely restrain myself from calling out, as he poured forth 
words now exquisitely sad and tender, now grand and heroic ; with 
an insight into character, a knowledge of the world, and a sustained 
eloquence which, each in its own way, were matchless. 

" Doubtless there is more or less truth in the assertion that Mr. 
Kingsley was a Broad Churchman. But assuredly in no party 
sense ; and the only time I ever heard him approach to anything 
like an exact definition of his position, he described himself as ' an 
old-fashioned High Churchman.' As in his earlier days, so in his 
latest, he was the devoted admirer and friend of Professor Maurice, 
of whom he used touchingly to speak as * my master.' It was his 
pride to belong to the Church of England, ' as by law established ;^ 
— he was never tired of quoting the words, nor of referring to the 
Prayer Book on all disputed points. I have never known any one 
speak more emphatically and constantly of the value of the Creeds, 
and the efficacy of the Sacraments, to which he alluded in almost 
every sermon I heard him preach. But perhaps the proem of ' The 
Saint's Tragedy,' ' Wake again, Teutonic Father- Ages,' is as true 
and beautiful an index of his religious position as can be found. 
The two most distinctive features of his religious teachiog were, I 
think, that the world is God's world, and not the Devil's, and that 
manliness is entirely compatible with godliness. Yet, whilst his 
name will indissolubly be associated with the latter doctrine, it 
must not be supposed that he was lacking in gentleness and deli- 
cate sympathy. There was in him a vein of almost feminine ten- 
derness, which I fancy increased as life advanced, and which 
enabled him to speak with a peculiar power of consolation to the 
sad and suffering, both in private and from the pulpit. With Puri- 
tanism he had little sympathy ; with Ritualism none. The former 
was to his rich poetic imagination and warm chivalrous nature ludi- 
crously defective as a theory of life. The latter was, in his opinion, 
too nearly allied in spirit to Romanism ever to gain his support or 
sanction in any way ; and of Rome he was the most uncompromis- 
ing opponent I have ever known. None of the great parties in the 
Church — it is an important fact — could lay claim to him exclu- 
sively. Intrepid fearlessness in the statement of his opinions ; a 
dislike to be involved in the strife of tongues ; unexpected points 
of sympathy with all the different sections of the Church ; a certain 
ideal of his own, both with regard to personal holiness and church 



The Study at E vers ley. 395 

regimen ; — these things always left him a free lance in the ecclesi- 
astical field. 

" The opinion may be taken for what it is worth, but it certainly 
is my opinion, that whilst Mr. Kingsley's convictions, during his 
career as a clergyman, remained substantially the same, as may be 
proved by a careful comparison of his later with his earlier writings, 
his behef in Revealed Truth deepened and increased, and his re- 
spect for the constituted order of things in Church and State grew 
more and more assured. Yet never, I fancy, at any time did the 
great and terrible battle of faith and doubt wholly cease within him. 
Probably few escape the stress of that conflict now-a-days ; but I 
think he knew more about it than most of us. For his reverence 
for what is called 'consistency' was very limited, and his mind was 
always busy with the workings of those life-problems which had 
left their mark upon his brow, and wrought into his very manner a 
restless energy which foretold a shortened career. Nevertheless, 
there is no doubt but that the victory remained with faith. 

" Surely if ever room could be haunted by happy ghosts it would 
be his study at Eversley, peopled as it must ever be with the bright 
creations of his brain. There every book on the many crowded 
shelves looked at him with almost human friendly eyes. And of 
books what were there not ? — from huge folios of St. Augustine * 
to the last treatise on fly-fishing. And of what would he not talk ? 
— classic myth and mediaeval romance, magic and modern science, 
metaphysics and poetry, West Indian scenery and parish schools, 
politics and fairyland, &c., &c. — and of all with vivid sympathy, 
keen flashes of humor, and oftentimes with much pathos and pro- 
found knowledge. As he spoke he would constantly verify his 
words. The book wanted — he always knew exactly where, as he 
said, it ' lived ' — was pulled down with eager hands ; and he, fling- 
ing himself back with lighted pipe into his hammock, would read, 
with almost boylike zest, the passage he sought for and quickly 
found. It was verj' impressive to observe how intensely he realized 
the words he read. I have seen him overcome with emotion as 
he turned the well-thumbed pages of his Homer, or perused the 
tragic story of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in his beloved Hakluyt. Nor 
did the work of the study even at such moments shut him in en- 
tirely, or make him forgetful of what was going on outside. • It's 
very pleasant,' he would say, opening the door which led on to the 
lawn, and making a rush into the darkness, ' to see what is going 
on out here.' On one such occasion, a wild autumnal night, after 
the thrilling recital of a Cornish shipwreck he had once witnessed, 
and the memory of which the turbulence of the night had conjured 
up, he suddenly cried, ' Come out ! come out ! ' We followed him 

* Once the property of John Sterling, and given to Mr. Kingsley by Thos. 
Carlyle. 



396 



Charles Kingsley. 



into the garden, to be met by a rush of warm driving rain before a 
south-westerly gale, which roared through the branches of the 
neighboring poplars. There he stood, unconscious of personal 
discomfort, for a moment silent and absorbed in thought, and then 
exclaimed in tones of intense enjoyment, ' What a night ! Drench- 
ing ! • This is a night on which you young men can't thing or talk 
too much poetry.' 

" Nevertheless, with this appreciation of nature in her wilder 
moods, he possessed ail a poet's love for her calmness. Indeed I 
think that anything that was savage in aspect was deeply alien to 
his mind ; inasmuch as he could never forget the injurious powers 




THE STUDY WINDOW, EVERSLEY RECTORY. 



that lurk in untamed nature to destroy human life, which to him 
was more precious than any inanimate beauty however sublime. 
Order and cultivation were of supreme value in his eyes ; and, from 
a point of artistic beauty, I believe he would have preferred an 
English homestead to an Indian jungle. Nay, even town scenes 
had a very great charm for him ; and one bright summer day, after 
his return from America, whilst walking in Kensington Gardens, he 
declared that he considered they were as beautiful as anything he 
had seen in the New World. And again, looking at some photo- 
graphs of bleak and barren mountain ranges, he said to a young 
painter who was admiring their grandeur — ' Yes ; paint them, and 
send the picture to the Academy, and call it, ' The Abomination 



Home Life. 397 

of Desolation ! ' Yet, withal, the descriptions of scenery which 
are so profusely scattered up and down his pages fully testify to 
his almost unique powers of appreciating nature in all her aspects 
and circumstances. I sometimes wondered whether his scientific 
knowledge had not dulled the splendor and dissipated much of the 
mystery that fill the world for the poet's heart. I once ventured 
to hint something of the sort to him. A very sad and tender look 
came over his face, and for a little while he was silent. Then he 
said, speaking slowly, — ' Yes, yes ; I know what you mean ; it is 
so. But there are times — rare moments — when nature looks out 
at me again with the old bride-look of earlier days.' 

" I should not venture to speak of his home-life, unless permis- 
sion had been granted me to do so, feeling that it is the most diffi- 
cult of tasks to lift the veil from any family life without marring its 
sacredness ; and that it is wholly beyond my power to preserve in 
words the living ' sweetness and light ' which pervaded his house- 
hold. That household was indeed a revelation to me, as I know 
it was to others ; — so nobly planned and ordered, so earnest in its 
central depths, so bright upon its surface. Many, now scattered 
far and wide, must remember how picturesque the rectory itself 
was. Even a stranger passing by would have stopped to look at 
the pleasant ivy-grown house, with its long, sloping, dark roofs, its 
gables, its bow-windows open to sun and air, and its quaint mixture 
of buildings, old and new. And who among his friends will ever 
cease to remember the lawn, and glebe-land sweeping upward 
towards the half-cultivated, half-wild copse ; through which the 
hidden path, henceforth sacred groimd to those who loved him, 
leads up and out to Hartford Bridge Flats. Marked features in 
the scene to them, and now widely known, were the grand Scotch 
firs on the lawn, under which on summer evenings I have seen 
many sweet pictures, and heard many noble words, and the 
branches of which now Avave solemnly above his last resting-place. 
The little church, though not remarkable for beauty in any way, 
seen here, through the bending boughs of the firs, and over the 
laurel bank, through which the steps led from the house, always 
made a pleasant corner in the picture in my eyes, with its red 
brick tower, and four vanes atop, one of which persistently dis- 
agreed with its neighbors, — ' a Nonconformist from its birth,' as 
Mr. Kingsley humorously said. 

" Here — in this beautiful home-scene, and truly ideal English 
Rectory — was the fountain-head — as I certainly think, and as he 
often said, of all his strength and greatness. Indeed, great as I 
knew him to be in his books, I found him greater at his own fire- 
side. Home was to him the sweetest, the fairest, the most roman- 
tic thing in life ; and there all that was best and brightest in him 
shone with steady and purest lustre." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

1869-1870. 
Aged 50-51. 

Resignation of Professorship — Women's Suffrage Question — Letters to Mr. 
Maurice, John Stuart Mill — Canonry of Chester — Social Science Meeting at 
Bristol — Letter from Dr. E. Blackwell — Medical Education for Women — 
West Indian Voyage — Letters from Trinidad — Return Home — Eversley a 
Changed Place — Flying Columns — Heath Fires — First Residence at Chester 
— Botanical Class — Field Lectures — Women's Suffrage — Franco-Prussian 
War — Wallace on Natural Selection — Matthew Arnold and Hellenism. 

The year 1869, which closed his professorial work at Cambridge, 
saw the beginning of a new chapter of his life as Canon of Chester. 
It was a year of severe intellectual work and great activity. He 
decided to resign the Professorship, and gave his last series of 
lectures at Cambridge. He completed his volume on the Hermils 
for the Sunday Library course. The " Lessons on Earth Lore 
for Children, Madam How and Lady Why," which had been 
coming out in " Good Words for the Young," was published as a 
volume. He wrote an article in " Macmillan's Magazine," on 
Women and Politics^ to help the question which was just then 
brought into discussion. He attended the first " Woman's Suf- 
frage " Meeting in London with Mr. J. Stuart Mill. He gave two 
lectures* on "Thrift" and "Breath" in a course for ladies, at 
Winchester, arranged by Mrs. C. A. Johns, the wife of his old 
friend and tutor. He made speeches at various Industrial and 
Mechanics' institutions in the diocese. He joined the Education 
League, and was elected President of the Education Section of the 
Social Science Congress at Bristol. He lectured on Natural Sci- 
ence to the boys of Wellington College and Clifton College. His 
parish prospered ; the Penny Readings and entertainments for the 
laborers, greatly helped by the musical talent of his curate, became 
more popular, once, as many as one hundred and fifty of his 

* Since published in " Health and Education." 



To Mr. Maurice on Overwork. 399 

parishioners being present at the National School. The resigna- 
tion of his professorial work relieving his mind from a heavy load 
of responsibility, and the prospect of a voyage to the West Indies, 
on the invitation of Sir Arthur Gordon, then Governor of Trinidad, 
fulfilling one of the dreams of his life, all helped to carry him 
through the active labors and anxieties of the year. 

TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 

EvERSLEY, January i6, 1869. 

" Your letter comforted me, for I had heard you were ill. You 
must rest and take care of yourself, and must not do (as I hear 
you do) other people's work whenever you are asked. You have 
enough, and too much to do of your own. And either, i. You are 
necessary to Providence ; and then you have no right to kill your- 
self by overwork ; or, 2. You are not necessary to Providence ; 
and then you have no need to kill yourself by overwork. I put 
that dilemma to you in all seriousness, and leave you to escape it 
if you can. It was a real' pleasure to me to hear from you that 
you had read my clumsy and silly little papers.* 1 wished to 
teach children — my own especially — that the knowledge of nature 
ought to make them reverence and trust God more, and not less 
(as our new lights inform us). And they are meant more as 
prolegomena to natural theology, than as really scientific papers, 
though the facts in them are (I believe) true enough. But I know 
very little about these matters, and cannot keep myself *■ au 
coura7it' of new discoveries, save somewhat in geology, and even 
in that I am no mineralogist, and palaeontologist. Science is 
grown too vast for any one head. 

" We are going soon to Cambridge. At first we stay at Barton 
with the Bunburys, I coming to and fro for my lectures. R. and I 
now mean to sail for the West Indies, if God permits (for one 
must say that very seriously in such a case), by the April mail ; 
but our plans may alter. Ah ! that you were coming too, and 
could be made to forget everything for a while, save flowers and 
skies and the mere sensation of warmth, the finest medicine in the 
world ! 

" What you say about not basing morality on psychology I am 
most thankful for. I seem to get a vista of a great truth far away. 
Far away enough from me, Heaven knows. But this I know : that 
I want to re-consider many things, and must have time to do it ; 
that I should like to devote the next twenty years to silence, 
thought, and, above all, prayer, without which no spirit can 
breathe." 

* "Madam How and Lady Why," dedicated to his son Grenville. 



400 Charles Kingsley. 

His concluding lectures at Cambridge were crowded ; the last 
one was on Comte. 

TO THE MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE. 

April I, 1869. 

" I am bound, after your kind advice and sympathy in the mat- 
ter of the professorship* (which I am not likely to forget), to tell 
you that I have obtained leave from the Queen to resign it at the 
end of the academic year, and have told Mr. Gladstone as much, 
and had a very kind reply from him. My brains, as well as my 
purse, rendered this step necessary. I worked eight or nine months 
hard for the course of twelve lectures which I gave last term, and 
was half-witted by the time they were delivered ; and as I have to 
provide for children growing up, I owe it to them not to waste 
time {which is money) as well as brain, in doing what others can 
do better. Only let me express a hope, that in giving up this ap- 
pointment 1 do not give up the friendships (especially yours) which 
I have found at Cambridge, a place on which 1 shall ever look 
with hearty affection ; and that when 1 come up (which I shall do 
as often as I can find an excuse) I may come and see you and 
Mrs. Thompson." 

He left Cambridge with feelings of deep gratitude to men of all 
classes in the University, having received nothing but kindness on 
all sides from the authorities down to the undergraduates ; dissatis- 
fied only with his own work, but thankful to have had his knowl- 
edge of men, especially young men, enlarged by the experience of 
the last nine years, and glad to have more time from henceforth to 
devote to physical science. 

TO JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ. 

EVERSLEY, June 3, 1869. 
" I have had the honor of receiving ' from the author ' your book 
on the 'Subjection of Woman.' It is not for me to compliment 
you. I shall only therefore say, in thanking you for it, that it 
seems to me unanswerable and exhaustive, and certain, from its 
moderation as well as from its boldness, to do good service in this 
good cause. It has been a deep pleasure to me to find you, in many 
passages in which you treat of what marriage ought to be, and what 
marriage is, corroborating opinions which have been for more 
tlian twenty-five years, the guides and safeguards of my own best 
life. 

* Two years before, when he offered to resign, and Dr. Thompson wished him 
to retain the office. 



To John Stuart Mill on Woman. 401 

" I shall continue to labor, according to my small ability, in the 
direction which you point out ; and all the more hopefully because 
your book has cleared and arranged much in my mind which was 
confused and doubtful." 

EvERSLEY, Jtme 17, 1869. 

"Your kind letter gave me much pleasure. I shall certainly 
attend the meeting ; and I need not say, that to pass a night under 
your roof will be an honor which I shall most gratefully accept. 

" I wish much to speak with you on the whole question of 
woman. In five and twenty years my ruling idea has been that 
which my friend Huxley has lately set forth as common to him and 
Comte ; that ' the reconstruction of society on a scientific basis is 
not only possible, but the only political object much worth striv- 
ing for.' One of the first questions naturally was. What does 
science — in plain Enghsh, nature and fact (which I take to be the 
acted will of God) — say about woman, and her relation to man ? 
And I have arrived at certain conclusions thereon, which (in the 
face of British narrowness) I have found it wisest to keep to my- 
self. That I should even have found out what I seem to know 
without the guidance of a woman, and that woman my wife, I dare 
not assert : but many years of wedded happiness have seemed to 
show me that our common conclusions were accordant with the 
laws of things, sufficiently to bring their own blessing with them. 
I beg you therefore to do me the honor of looking on me, though 
(I trust) a Christian and a clergyman, as completely emancipated 
from those prejudices which have been engrained into the public 
mind by the traditions of the monastic or canon law about women, 
and open to any teaching which has for its purpose the doing 
woman justice in every respect. As for speaking at the meeting, 
my doing so will depend very much on whether there will be, or will 
not be, newspaper reporters in the room. I feel a chivalrous dis- 
like of letting this subject be lowered in print, and of seeing pearls 
cast before swine — with the usual result. 

" Mrs. Kingsley begs me to add the expression of her respect 
for you. Her opinion has long been that this movement must be 
furthered rather by men than by the women themselves." 

This visit was one of great interest to Mr. Kingsley. He was as 
much struck with Mr. Mill's courtesy as with his vast learning — he 
had the manners of the old school, he said. 

*' When I look at his cold, clear-cut face," he remarked to Dr. 
Carpenter, " 1 thnik there is a whole hell beneath him, of which 
he knows nothing, and so there may be a whole heaven above 
him. . . ." 
26 



402 Charles Kingsley. 

TO LIONEL TOLLEMACHE, ESQ. 

yune, 1869. 

" Many thanks for the ' Fortnightly,' and your very amusing and 
well-written article on Egotism. I trust it will not corrupt me ; 
for I dread any egotism on my part, as the root which may blossom 
out into the most unexpected forms of actual wrong-saying and 
doing. I suppose I am too great a fool to be trusted to talk about 
myself. If so, it is all the better that I should keep the fact in 
mind. Are you aware that when ' Pepys's Diary' was fished out 
of our Pepysian library at Magdalene, much of it was found to be 
so dirty, that the editors had to omit it ? He was a foul-minded 
old dog. Our only record of him (beside the curious library he 
left us) is, I believe : ' Mr. Pepys, having been found by y^ proc- 
tors last night disguised in liquor, was admonished not to offend in. 
y° like again.' 

"The whole number is very valuable, especially so to me, for 
Huxley's article,* I don'-t know whether you take an interest in 
that matter. In my opinion Huxley is thoroughly right : at least 
he interprets Comte exactly as I have been in the habit of inter- 
preting him." 

On the 13th of August Mr, Kingsley received the following 
letter from Mr. Gladstone : 

" I have much pleasure in proposing to you that you should 
accept the Canonry of Chester, vacated by the appointment of 
Dr. Moberly to the See of Salisbury, and if you agree, I need not 
impose on you any obligation of even temporary secrecy, as I 
know that the act will be very agreeable to her Majesty. 

" The cathedral of Chester is under an energetic Dean, and nave 
services are now carried on in it with excellent efifect." 



The canonry was gratefully accepted, and many were the con- 
gratulations received. 

EvERSLEY, Atigusi 20, 1869. 

" It is very kind," said Mr. Kingsley to his friend and neighbor 
Mr. Raikes Currie, " of you to congratulate me thus ; but kindness 
is your element, and a very wholesome element it is, for both parties 

* On the Scientific Aspects of Positivism, in which he speaks of Comte's Ideal, 
as stated by himself, being " Catholic organization without Catholic doctrine, or 
in other words, Catholicism minus Christianity." Fortnightly Review, New 
Series, No. xxx. , p. 657. 



At the Social Science Congress. 403 

concerned in it. You never were more right than when you said 

that I should not like to be a bishop And even a 

deanery I shrink from ; because it would take me away from Evers- 
ley ; the home to which I was ordained, where I came when I was 
married, and which I intend shall be my last home : for go where I 
will in this hard-working Avorld, I shall take care to get my last sleep 
in Eversley church-yard." 

Bishop Wilberforce (then of Oxford) wrote to him at once : 

"I am quite certain of your great powers being used on the side 
of that Truth which so many, as it seems to me, in their very longing 
to support it, distrust and dishonor. 

" May God give you many years of usefulness, and a happy ending 
of your highly vital life." 

In October he went to Bristol to take his share in the Social 
Science Congress, as President of the Educational Section, at which 
Mr. Henry de Bunsen read a valuable paper on " How can the 
State best help in the Education of the Working Classes ? " and 
in a letter to his mother the baroness, thus speaks of meeting Mr. 
Kingsley : 

" I was at the Clifton College, the new public school, and a most 
flourishing one, having already, though only in its fifth year, three 
hundred and sixty boys, and was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Perceval, 
the head master. Charles Kingsley and his wife were there. Kings- 
ley was most hearty and charming, especially when I got used to 
his stammering speech (which entirely disappears when he has to 
speak or read in public). ... To me it was a time full of in- 
terest. I drove Kingsley, on Wednesday afternoon, between two 
thunderstorms, to Blaise Castle Aunt L wac de- 
lighted with our visit. Kingsley was, I must say, charming. He 
is a great lover of art, and understands it thoroughly. He is a still 

greater lover oC trees and Nature, and told Aunt L that it was 

worth while coming the whole way from Eversley to see her two 
wonderful trees from Japan, the Salisburia, and the Sophora Japon- 
ica Wednesday was the opening address of the Con- 
gress from Sir Stafford Northcote. We dined one night at the 
Lewis Frys', where Sir S. was staying, and he and Kingsley told 
charming Devonshire stories in turn ! It was a wonderful treat, for 
both could imitate the language and tone exactly. On Thursday 
we had a most interesting discussion in the Education Department, 
as to how far it would be possible to have ' religious instruction,' 
without entering into 'dogmatic differences,' and therefore having 
schools admitting eveiy denomination, and leaving to parents and 



404 Charles Kingsley. 

ministers the specific instruction in their several denominations. 
On Friday, Mr. Kingsley gave us as stirring an address on educa- 
tion (in the highest and best and most comprehensive sense of the 
word), female and male, compulsory and for all classes, as ever was 
given. Some nine hundred people (of intelligent classes — no work- 
ing classes) were present ; and he electrified his audience by his 
earnestness and liberality, praising the efforts, not only of all min- 
isters of religion, and of societies like the ' National,' and ' British 
and Foreign,' but also of the Society of Friends, as being foremost 

in education 

" On Saturday morning, at nine o'clock, we had a great treat in 
hearing an address from Mr. Kingsley to the three hundred and 
sixty boys of Clifton College School, chiefly on study combined 
with scientific observation in other branches of learning ; so as to 
give them something to do in their spare hours, and to carry on 
in their holidays, in making collections of all kinds (avoiding cruelty 
to birds, and wholesale destruction of nests and eggs), and that not 
for themselves, but for a general museum belonging to their school. 
This would avoid much destruction. ' Eyes and no Eyes,' played 
a prominent part in the address." 

His inaugural address, which made a profound sensation at the 
time, was printed by the League, and about 100,000 copies dis- 
tributed. 

He had lately joined the Education League with several other 
clergymen, who, like himself, were nearly hopeless about a compul- 
sory National Education, in which measure alone they saw hope 
for the masses ; but he subsequently withdrew, and gave his warm 
allegiance to Mr, Forster's Act, for the same reasons as his friend, 
a London Rector, who says : 

"I ceased to take any interest in the League after it had done 
its work ; that of rousing a reluctant Government to do something. 
That something the Government did by Mr. Forster's help ; and 
after the Elementary Act was passed the League to me was dead. 
It had done its work, and that a good work. So far as I can 
judge of its work since, I think that work such that a liberal cler- 
gyman cannot approve it. It has become narrow and sectarian, 
while pretending to be Catholic and liberal, and its speakers and 
supporters are generally unjust to the National Church." 

At this Congress, the subject of the Medical Education of 
Women was discussed, and he made acquaintance with Dr. Eliza- 
abeth Blackwell, who had herself taken a medical degree, and had 



Medical Degrees to Women. 405 

practised for twenty-five years as a consulting physician in America. 
She was afterwards a welcome guest at Eversley and Chester, and 
has kindly contributed her recollections of these visits. 

" My dear Mrs. Kingsley, 

" I think that no sketch of Canon Kingsley's life would be 
complete without some record of his constant and even enthusiastic 
interest in the subject of the medical education of women. I 
never shall forget the words he spoke to me, when (returning to 
my native land after a long absence) I met him for the first time in 
Bristol. 

" ' You are one of my heroes ! ' was the greeting — words of rec- 
ognition which filled me with gratitude, and seemed a rich reward 
for a life of effort. He then proceeded to tell me of the profound 
interest with which, for many years, he had watched the gradual 
growth of woman's endeavor to obtain the advantages of a thor- 
ough medical education ; and how, ' from his inmost soul, he gave 
it a hearty God-speed.' Through the years that followed, he 
showed himself a constant and ardent friend of this noble cause ; 
always ready to give information or advice in relation to any plans 
for its advancement. The old fir woods of Eversley, and the dis- 
tant mountain views of Chester, will always be associated in my 
mind with the long walks we took together; when, with wonder- 
ful earnestness and eloquence, he poured forth the treasures of 
his experience for my guidance, listening eagerly to every sign of 
progress, carefully considering every suggestion ; anxious only, 
with the whole force of his nature, to give wisdom and support 
to one who was carrying on this cherished work of his. During 
the few years that I knew him, he was always ready, no matter 
how busy or how tired he might be, to give thought and aid to any 
plan for carrying on the work. Only a few weeks before he left 
us, in December of 1874, I saw him several times at the Cloisters, 
Westminster, in relation to a proposed plan for securing medical 
degrees to women. Although his health was broken, and he was 
suffering from over-work, he entered upon this subject with his 
customary enthusiasm ; gave it his most careful consideration, and 
agreed (with your cordial approbation, dear Mrs. Kingsley) to be- 
come chairman of the committee which was being formed for the 
purpose of carrying out this important measure. I have full faith 
that the accomplishment of no providential work can be really 
hindered by the departure of any individual worker ; but I know 
that our cause has suftered a heavy loss in the death of your noble 
husband ; and with grateful remembrance I offer this record of his 
large-hearted and intelligent sympathy. 

*' I remain, my dear Friend, affectionately yours, 

" Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D." 



4o6 Charles Kings ley. 

In November he went down to Chester to be installed as Canon, 
and was most kindly received by the Dean and the Chapter, with 
whom for the next three years he worked so harmoniously. 

On the 2nd of December, he and his daughter embarked at 
Southampton for the West Indies. 

It would be a twice told tale to those who have read his " At 
Last " to do more than glance at his account of the voyage and its 
new experiences, the historic memories of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir 
Richard Grenville, and many of England's forgotten worthies woke 
up by the sight of the Azores, and of all he felt at finding himself 
on the track of the "old sea heroes," Drake and Hawkins, Carlile 
and Cavendish, Cumberland, Preston, Frobisher, and Duddely, 
Keyrnis and Widdon — ^and of the first specimen of the Gulf-weed 
which brought back " the memorable day when Columbus's ship 
plunged her bows into the tangled ocean meadow, and the sailors 
were ready to mutiny, fearing hidden shoals, ignorant that they 
had four miles of blue water beneath their keel," — and of the awe 
which the poet and the man of science must needs feel at that first 
sight of the " Sargasso sea, and of the theories connected with it — 
not wholly impossible — of a sunken Atlantic continent — and of 
his enjoyment of the glorious cloudland, and the sudden sunsets 

when 

' The sun's rim dips, the stars rush out. 
At one stride comes the dark ; ' 

to be succeeded after balmy nights by the magnificent pageant of 
tropic sunlight " — and of the first sight of the New World, and the 
look out for Virgin Gorda, one of those numberless islands which 
Columbus discovered on St. Ursulas day, and of the arrival at St. 
Thomas, with- its scarlet and purple roofs piled uj) among orange 
trees, and the first glimpse of a tropic hill-side. " Oh ! for a boat 
to get into that paradise ! " and how the boat was got ; and how 
he leapt out on a sandy beach — and then the revelation of tropic 
vegetation, and the unmistakable cocoa-nut trees, and the tall aloes, 
and the grey-blue Cerei, and the bright deep green of a patch of 
Guinea grass ; — and the astonishment which swallowed up all other 
emotions at the wonderful wealth of life — and the " effort, at first 
in vain, to fix our eyes on some one dominant or typical form, 
while &\t.ry form was clamoring as it were to be looked at, and a 
fresh Dryad gazed out of every bush, and with wooing eyes asked 



Westward Ho ! 407 

to be wooed — and the drooping boughs of the shoregrape with its 
dark velvet leaves and crimson midrib, and the fragrant Frangi- 
pane, and the first cocoa-nut, and the mangrove swamp, and then 
the shells — the old friends never seen till now but in cabinets at 
home, earnests that all was not a dream ; the prickly pinna, the 
great strombi, with the outer shell broken away, disclosing the rosy 
cameo within and looking on the rough beach pitifully tender and 
flesh-like ; and the lumps of coral, all to be actually picked up and 
handled — and the first tropic orchid, and the first wild pines cling- 
ing parasitic on the boughs of strange trees, or nestling among the 
angular shoots of the columnar Cereus ; " and the huge green cala- 
bashes, the playthings of his childhood, alive and growing; and 
how "up and down the sand we wandered collecting shells, till we 
rowed back to the ship over white sand where grew the short man- 
ati grass, and where the bottom was stony, we could see huge 
prickly sea urchins, huger brainstone corals, round and grey, and 
above, sailing over our heads, flocks of brown and grey pelicans, 
to show us where we were — and met the fleet of negro boats laden 
with bunches of plantains, yams, green oranges, sugar cane ; " and 
then the steaming down the islands, and the sight of the Lesser 
Antilles, the beauty and grandeur of which exceeded all his boy- 
ish dreams ; and St. Kitts with its great hill, which took, in Colum- 
bus's imagination, the form of the giant St. Christopher bearing on 
his shoulder the infant Christ — and how "from the ship we beheld 
with wonder and delight, the pride of the West Indies, the Cabbage 
Palms — well named by botanists the Oreodoxa, the glory of the 
mountains — grey pillars, smooth and cylindrical as those of a Doric 
temple, each carrying a flat head of darkest green ; " and how 
Guadaloupe, Dominica, and Martinique were passed, and St. 
Vincent and its souffiiere gazed on with awe and reverence — and 
the beautiful St. Lucia with its wonderful Pitons, and through the 
Grenadines to Grenada, the last of the Antilles, as now the steamer 
ran dead south for seventy miles, and on St. Thomas Day, at early 
dawn, 

"We became aware of the blue mountains of North Trinidad 
a-head of us ; to the west the island of the Dragon's Mouth, and 
westward again, a cloud among the clouds — the last spur of the 
Cordilleras of the Spanish Main. There was South America at 
last ; and as a witness that this, too, was no dream, the blue waters 



4o8 Charles Kings ley. 

of the Windward Isles changed suddenly into foul bottle-green. 
The waters of the Orinoco, waters from the peaks of the Andes far 
away, were staining the sea around us. With thoughts full of three 
great names, connected as long as civilized men shall remain, with 
those waters — Columbus, Raleigh, Humboldt — we steamed on 
. . . . and then saw before us .... to the eastward, the 
northern hills of Trinidad, forest clad down to the water ; to the 
south a long line of coast, generally level with the water's edge, 
green with mangroves or dotted with cocoa palms. That was the 

Gulf of Paria and Trinidad beyond In half-an-hour 

more we were on shore, amid negroes, coolies, Chinese, French, 
Spaniards, short-legged Guaraon dogs and black vultures." 

On the voyage he had been able to write home more than once, 
and to telegraph from St. Thomas. 

Christmas found him the guest of his kind friend Sir Arthur Gor- 
don, Governor of Trinidad, at the Cottage, Port of Spain, the 
earthly Paradise which he had reached at last. 

The Cottage, Port of Spain. 

Trinidad, January 23, 1870. 

" . . . You may conceive the delight with which I got your 
letter, and M 's, and to think that the telegram should have ar- 
rived on Christmas Day ! No wonder the intellect of Eversley was 
puzzled to find out how it came. You may tell them that Mr. . 
Dunlop, Consul-General at Cuba, who went out with us, took a 
telegram for us to Havana, whence there is telegraph to New 
York, and so to England, and as it went by government hands, had 
priority of all. It is delightful to think that by now you have got 

our lettei-s As for us, we are perfectly well. I have 

not been so well this seven years. I have been riding this week six 
to eight hours a day, through primeval forests, mud, roots, gullies, 
and thickets, such that had I anticipated them, I would have 
brought out breeches and boots. English mud is but a trifle 
to tropical. But I have had no fall, and never got wet, and as for 
what I have seen, no tongue can tell. We have got many curiosi- 
ties, and lots of snakes. I have only seen one alligator, about five 
to six feet long, and marks only of deer and capo. But I have 
seen one of the mud volcanoes ! As for scenery, for vastness and 
richness mingled, I never saw its like. Oh that I could transport 
you to the Monserrat hills for one hour. We can get no pho- 
tographs, so that I know not how to make you conceive it all. 
The woods are now vermilion with Bois Immortel ; in a fortnight 
they will be golden w^'-h Poui (all huge trees). I have seen a tree 
which for size beats all 1 ever dreamed of, a Sand-box, forty- 



Life in the Trinidad Forests. 409 

four feet round and seventy-five feet (we got down a liana and 
measured it) to the first fork, which did not seem hah" up the tree. 
But with too many of these giants, you can get no good view, their 
heads being lost in the green world above. But I have seen single 
trees left in parks over one hundred and twenty feet, with vast flat 
heads, which are gardens of orchids, &c., and tons of lianas hanging 
down from them, and the spurs of their roots hke walls of board as 
high ao a man. On Tuesday we start again for the north const, 
then a short dash to the east, and then home. I have resisted all 

soHcitations and invitations, and poor F. H being ill, gives me 

a plain reason for keeping my promise to you. Besides, I have 
seen enough already to last me my life. I keep saying, ' I cannot 
not have been in the tropics.' And as I ride, I jog myself, 
and say, You stupid fellow, wake up. Do you see that 1 and that .? 
Do you know where you are ? and ray other self answers. Don't 
bother. I have seen so much, I can't take in any more, and I 
don't care about it all. So I am in a state of intellectual repletion, 
indigestion, and shall take full twelvemonths to assimilate and ar- 
range the mass of new impressions. I assure you I am very careful. 
I had to he off a mangrove swamp in burning sun, very tired, 
after having ridden four hours, and been shoved over the mud in a 
canoe among the cahing crabs, by three niggers, and I did not feel 
it the least, though the mud stank, and the wind was off shore, be- 
cause before I got into the canoe, I took a good dose of quinine, 
which I always carry. Moreover, there are some wonderful angos- 
tura bitters (the same which cured Humboldt of his fever) which 
people take here before dinner, or when wet, tired, or chilly, and 
their effect is magical. I shall bring some home, and get Heynes 
to try them on the next case of ague or low fever. They are tonic, 
not alcoholic. 1 have kept a great number of notes, and must make 
more. But this week I have travelled too fast, and have had no 
luggage, save at my saddle-bow. It is a glorious life in the fore.-^t, 
and I should like six months of it without stopping, if it ilid not 
rain. But the dry season is coming on now, and it is growing d.i- 
lightfully cool." 

Seven weeks passed quickly in the enjoyment, not only of the 
scenery that he has described in " At Last," the memories of which 
were fresh as ever on his death-bed, but in companionship with one 
whose society was a continual charm, who had attracted him from 
the first hour he spent in his society -two years before, and with whom, 
living at so high a level and with such noble aims, he could com- 
mune on the deeper subjects, dear to both. Thanks to thi.s kind 
host, to whom he had now grown strongly attached, and to whom 
he owed one of the most delightful episodes of his life, he took 



4 TO Chaj'les Kings ley. 

leave of lovely Trinidad refreshed in brain, strengthened in health, 
enriched with beautiful memories, and in the possession of a friend- 
ship which was true to the last. Sir Arthur Gordon little thought 
that in five years he should be standing by Charles Kingsley's 
grave at Eversley, before himself setting sail for a still greater 
work in the Fiji Islands, than the government of Trinidad or the 
Mauritius. 

He left St. Thomas by a different track to that by which he came, 
running northward between Tortola and Virgin Gorda towaid the 
Gulf-stream — or Drake's Channel, as it had been named since 1575 ; 
a more advantageous course for a homeward bound ship, as it 
strikes the Gulf stream soonest and keeps it longest. The voyage 
was successful, and notwithstanding a fatality among the live-stock, 
and the death of an ant-eater and an alligator, " who wept crocodile 
tears before his departure," the kinkajou and the parrot, who were 
bound for Eversley Rectory, survived, and towards the end of 
February 

" The Land's End was visible, and as we neared the Lizard we 
could see not only the lighthouses on the cliff, and every well-known 
cave and rock from MuUion and Kynance round to St. Keverne, 
but far inland likewise ; and regrets for the lovely western paradise 
were all swallowed up with bright thoughts of the cold northern 
home as ' we ran northwards for the Needles. With what joy we 
saw at last the white wall of the island glooming dim ahead. With 
what joy we first discerned that huge outline of a visage, on Fresh- 

Avater Cliff, so well known to sailors ' With what joy 

did we round the old Needles and run past Hurst Castle, and with 

what shivering, too At first an English winter was a 

change for the worse. Fine old oaks and beeches looked to us, 
fresh from ceibas and volatas, like leatless brooms stuck into the 
ground by their handles ; while the want of light was for some days 
painful and depressing. But we had done it, and within the three 
months, as we promised. As the king in the old play says, ' What 
has been, has been, and I've had my hour.' At least we had seen 
it, and we could not unsee it. We could not have been in the 
tropics." 

And now returned he settled down in the parish with renewed 
vigor, though feeling the change of climate almost as cruelly as 
his son, who arrived at the same moment from South America. 
The parish benefited by their respective travels at Penny Readings 



The Camp at Alder shot. 411 

and in their visits to the cottagers. He loved to give his people 
the results of his own and his children's new experiences in life ; for 
in a certain sense Eversley had advanced a step in intelligent sym- 
pathy with the great world outside. It was the same Eversley, and 
yet different to what it had been when he first came there twenty- 
eight years before. His own personal influence, and the influence 
of new circumstances, had told upon it. It was no longer the se- 
cluded spot it had been in his curate days, or even at a later 
period, when he loved to dwell on its "monotony" as "so pleasant 
in itself, morally pleasant and morally useful." 

The monotony was broken occasionally by very startling inci- 
dents — the neighborhood of Aldershot bringing flying columns to 
the Flats and Bramshill Park. Engineering parties camped out 
and wells were sunk on the newly enclosed glebe land, as for an 
advancing army ; artillery wagons rumbled past the quiet rectory, 
and bugle calls were heard at all hours by the Rector and his peo- 
ple. Now and then, too, the monotony was broken by quite 
another excitement, for a great heath fire would break out on the 
Flats, and sometimes encroached on the firs at Bramshill Park, 
and committed havoc among them. 

"At such a time," says a friend, "the Rector was all activity. 
On one occasion the fire began during the time of divine service. 
A messenger posted down to the church in hot haste, to call out 
the men ; and Mr. Kingsley, leaving the curate to finish the 
service, rushed to the scene of action, taking a flying leap, in 
surplice, hood, and stole, over the churchyard palings. The fire 
was an extensive one ; but he, armed with a bill-hook, and now di- 
vested of everything ecclesiastical, was everywhere, organizing 
bands of beaters, and, begirt with smoke and flame, resisting the 
advance of the fire at every advantageous point. Yox many nights 
subsequently watchers were placed in the woods ; and at a late 
hour (between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m.) Mr. Kingsley would sally forth 
and go the rounds, carefully inspecting the country as he went, 
cheering the watchers with kind hearty words of encouragement — 
himself intensely interested in the general picturesqueness of the 
event, and excited by the feeling that the alarm might be given at 
any moment, and the firs which he loved so dearly be wrapped in 
flame." 

On the 1st of May he took possession of "the Residence" in 
Abbey Square, Chester, for three months. His Dean, to whom he 
gave glad allegiance and under whom he worked for three years, 



412 Charles Kings ley. 

received him with cordial kindness ; and it was a happy circum- 
stance and an important one to him that the first cathedral with 
which he was connected, was one where the reverent worship and 
admirable arrangements made every service in which he joined 
congenial and elevating. Choral services had hitherto had little 
attraction for him : the slovenliness which in by-gone years charac- 
terised them in some places, having shocked him from the aesthetic 
and still more from the religious point of view. Had this been the 
case at Chester it would have been a serious drawback to the hap- 
piness of his life while there. But all was in harmony with the 
ideal of Christian worship. And the dignity of the services, the 
reverence of all who conducted them, from its visitor, the Bishop 
much beloved, who was always present (except when diocesan 
business called him away), down to the little chorister boys, im- 
pressed him deeply. It filled the new Canon's heart with thank- 
fulness that the lot had fallen to him in a cathedral, where dean, 
precentor, organist, choir master and lay clerks all worked ear- 
nestly to one end ; and he could say with truth, as day by day he 
entered the venerable cloisters, " How amiable are Thy dwellings, 
O Lord, Thou God of hosts. My soul hath a desire and longing 
to enter into the courts of the Lord. One day in Thy courts is 
better than a thousand. Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house," 
The early morning daily services were his great refreshment, and 
seemed to hallow the day to him, and many peaceful moments did 
he spend in the old chapter house, in reading and prayer, before 
the clergy and choir assembled for worship, at eight o'clock a.m. 

The Sunday services, including the vast nave congregation in 
the evening, were exciting and exhausting ; but through all, he ex- 
perienced an abiding satisfaction of soul, a sense of the fitness of 
things, which was quite unexpected to himself and to those who 
had known his previous habit of life and feeling. Without pro- 
fessing to understand music, he had always felt it, as a man of his 
genius and fine organization necessarily must : but at Chester it 
revealed itself to him in the cathedral worship, and in daily inter- 
course with his friend the Precentor, he soon learned to look and 
long for particuar anthems and services with eagerness and appre- 
ciation. 

A ie.w days after arriving at Chester he took the chair for the 
Dean at a meeting of the Archccological Society, and on being 



Settled at Chester. 413 

asked whether he belonged to the old Kingsley family once in 
Cheshire, said : 

" His own feeling in coming to Chester was that he was coming 
home, for although he was landless, his ancestors had not been. 
He confessed to a feeling of pride in his connection with Che- 
shire, and to the mention of his name in the old Tarporley hunt- 
ing song : 

' In riglit of his bugle and greyhounds to sieze 
Waif, pannage, agistment, and wind-fallen trees ; 
His knaves through our'forest Ralph Kingsley dispersed, 
Bow-bearer-in-chief to Earl Randall the First. 

* This Horn the Grand Forester wore at his side 
Whene'er his liege lord chose a-hunting to ride — 
By Sir Ralph and his heirs for a century blown, 
It passed from his lips to the mouth of a Done.' 

He was glad to come to a county where many of his kin had 
lived, and where he had many friends, and he had no higher ambi- 
tion than to hve and die Canon of Chester. He was by no means 
an ambitious man, as the world called a man ambitious. All he 
wanted was time to do his work and write his books ; and if in 
anything set on foot in this ancient city — any movement connected 
with literary and scientific societies or mechanics' institutes— he 
might be able to help in his humble way, he was at the service of 
the good citizens of Chester. He did not wish to thrust himself 
forward, to originate anything grand, or to be in anybody's way ; 
but if they could find him reasonable work, as he was a rather 
overworked man, he would be happy to do it, without any regard 
to creed, politics, or rank in any way whatsoever. He thanked the 
gentlemen who had said so much in his favor, and hoped he should 
not forfeit the good opinion they had somewhat hastily formed of 
him." 

Besides the daily services, which were an occupation in them- 
selves, and the preparation of his sermons, he was anxious to get 
some regular week-day work that would bring the cathedral and 
the town in close contact. As usual his heart turned to the young 
men, whose time on long spring and summer evenings might be 

* The bugle horn, alluded to in the old song, and which is in his coat of arms, 
was the one which his ancestors, as Foresters to Earl Randall, ha-J the right to 
wear. Tlie grandson of this Ranulph, Ralph de Kingsley, married Mabilla de 
Moston in 1233, and the same coat of arms, "vert a cross engrailed ermine on 
an escocheon of pretence Argent, a bugle strung sable," have been carried by 
the family through many reverses to the present day. 



414 Charles Kingsley. 

turned to account, and he offered to start a little class on physical 
science, expecting to have perhaps at most sixteen to twenty young 
shopmen and clerks. Botany was the chosen subject, and in a 
small room belonging to the city library, on the walls, he began — 
the black board and a bit of white chalk being as usual of impor- 
tant help to the lectures, which he illustrated throughout. The 
class soon increased so much in numbers that he had to migrate 
to a larger room — a walk and a tield lecture was proposed once a 
week — and the party was watched from the walls with surprise, and 
once the gathering was so large that a man who met them sup- 
posed them to be a congregation going off to the opening of a 
Dissenting chapel in the country. This was the beginning of the 
Chester Natural History Society, which now numbers between five 
and six hundred members, with president, secretary, monthly meet- 
ing report, regular summer excursions, and winter courses. 

" I am very happy here," he writes to Mr. Froude. " I have daily 
service, which is very steadying and elevating. Plenty of work in 
the place. I have started a botanical class for middle-class young 
men, which seems to go well ; an opportunity of preaching to 
shrewd, able Northern men, who can understand and respond ; 
and time to work at physical science — the only thing I care for 
much now — for it is the way of God who made all ; while, — 

' All the windy ways of men 
Are but dust which rises up 
And is lightly laid again.' " 

He occasionally preached in the diocese during his first resi- 
dence, the Dean being anxious that the work of the chapter should 
extend beyond the cathedral city, and on one occasion he preached 
a sermon for the Kirkdale Ragged School, in June, which made a 
deep impression, and was much quoted from by Liverpool news- 
papers, under the heading of " Canon Kingsley on Human Soot." 
" I remember," says a clergyman who heard him on this occasion, 
" that marvellous sermon on ' Human Soot,' It made me more 
than ever know the magnificent mental calibre of the man. Canon 
Kingsley was one of a few, and they giants. . . . " 

We now return to the letters for the year. Among them are 
two on "Woman's Rights ;" the date of the last is uncertain, but 
both are significant of his latest views on this question. 



Womctts Suffrage. 415 



TO MRS. PETER TAYLOR. 

Chester, May 27, 1870. 

"I have the honor of acknowledging your letter respecting the 
Women's Suffrage Question. If I, as one who has the movement 
at heart more intensely than I choose to tell any one, and also as 
one who is not unacquainted with the general public opinion of 
England, might dare to give advice, it would be, not in the direc- 
tion of increased activity, but in that of increased passivity. Fool- 
ish persons have 'set up the British Lion's back,' with just fears 
and suspicions. Right-minded, but inexperienced persons, have set 
up his back with unjust (though pardonable) fears and suspicions. 
I do not hesitate to say, that a great deal which has been said and 
done by women, and those who wish to sujjport women's rights, 
daring the last six months, has thrown back our cause. I will not, 
nay, I utterly decline to, enter into details. But that what 1 say is 
true, I know, and know too well. We shall not win by petitions. 
The House of Commons cares nothing for them. It knows too 
well how they can be got up, and takes for granted that we shall 
get up ours in the same way. 

" By pamphleteering we shall not win. Pamphlets now are too 
common. They melt on the debauched and distracted sensorium 
of the public, like snow on water. By quiet, modest, silent, private 
influence, we shall win. ' Neither strive nor cry, nor let your voice 
be heard in the streets,' was good advice of old, and is still. I 
have seen many a movement succeed by it, I have seen many a 
movement tried by the other method, of striving, and crying, and 
making a noise in the street. But I have never seen one succeed 
thereby, and never shall. I do not hesitate to say, that unless 
this movement is kept down to that tone of grace, and modesty, 
and dignity, which it would always be by you, madam, were you 
the only leader, and which would make it acceptable to the mass 
of cultivated and experienced, and therefore justly powerful, 
Englishmen and English women, it will fail only by the fault of its 
supporters. 

" I warn you of a most serious danger. I have found that when 
the question has been put in its true, practical, rational light, to men 
and women who had the greatest horror of it from prejudice, their 
consciences and reasons gave way at once, and they were ready to 
submit and agree. But I have found, alas ! that within a week, 
some one or other had said or done something premature, or even 
objectionable, which threw back tJie process of conversion. This 
is the true cause of our seemingly unexpected failure. And 1 en- 
treat you, as one who never by word or deed, as far as I have 
known, have contributed to that failure, and for whom I have so 
profound a respect, to control, instead of exciting, just now, those 
over whom you have, and ought to have, influence." 



4i6 Charles Kings ley. 

About this time Mr. John Stuart Mill, hearing that Mr. Kingsley 
had withdrawn more or less from the movement, wrote to ask him 
his reasons. The mode of procedure of some of its advocates had 
shocked him so, tliat he refused to attend any meetings, and the 
only branch of the subject to which he willingly gave his influence 
latterly was the Medical education of women, which he had held 
for years (long before the question of " Women's Suffrage " was 
mooted) was one of the deepest importance, and which to the last 
had his entire sympathy. 

TO JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ. 

, Chester. 
" My dear Mr. Mill, 

" As you have done me the maexpected honor of asking my 
opinion on an important matter, I can only answer you with that 
frankness which is inspired by confidence and respect, i. I do not 
think that ladies speaking can have had, or can have, any adverse 
influence. You used, J doubt not, your usual wisdom in opposing 

Miss 's speaking at a public meeting, and, as yet, but only as 

yet, I should think such a move premature. That I think women 
ought to speak in public, in any ideal, or even truly civilized society 
and polity, I hope I need not tell you. My fear is, not so much that 
women should speak, as who the women are who speak. . . 

" There exist, in all ranks of the English, and in none more than 
in the highest rank, women brave, prudent, pure, wise, tried by 
experience and sorrow, highly cultivated and thoughtful too, whose 
intiuence is immense, and is always exercised for good, as far as they 
see their way. And unless we can get these, of all ranks, and in 
each rank, down to the very lowest, to be ' the leaders of fashion,' 
for good, instead of evil, we shall not succeed. I am pained, in a 
very large acquaintance of all ranks, to find the better rather than 
the worse women against us, to find that foolish women, of no sound 
or coherent opinions, and of often questionable morals .... 
are inclined to patronise us in the most noisy and demonstrative 
Avay. I am aware of the physical and psychical significance of this 
fact. 1 know, and have long foreseen, that what our new idea has 
to beware of, lest it should be swamped thereby, is hysteria, male 
and female. Christianity was swamped by it from at least the third 
to the sixteenth century, and if we wish to save ourselves from the 
same terrible abyss, and to — I quote my dear friend Huxley's words, 
with full agreement, though giving them a broader sense than he would 
as yet — ' to reconstruct society according to science,' we must steer 
clear of the hysteric element, which 1 define as tlie fancy and emo- 
tions unduly excited by suppressed sexual excitement. It is all the 
more necessary to do this, if we intend to attack ' social evils,' i.e..^ 



Emancipated Women. 417 

sexual questions, by the help of woman raised to her proper place. 
That you mean to do so I take for granted. That I do, I hope 
you take for granted. If not, I should be glad some day to have 
the honor of talking over with you this whole matter, on which I 
have long thought, and on which I have arrived at conclusions 
which I keep to myself as yet, and only utter as Greek cf>wvavTa 
a-vveTOLu-i, the principle of which is, that there will never be a good 
world for woman, till the last monk, and therewith the last remnant 
of the monastic idea of, and legislation for, woman, i.e., the canon 
law, is civilized off the earth. 

"Meanwhile, all the most pure and high-minded women in Eng- 
land, and in Europe, have been brought up under the shadow of the 
canon law, have accepted it, with their usual divine self-sacrifice, as 
their destiny by law of God and nature ; and consider their own 
womanhood outraged, when it, their tyrant, is meddled with. It is to 
them, therefore, if we wish (as I do) for a social revolution, that we 
must address ourselves mildly, privately, modestly, rationally. Public 
meetings drive them away, for their experiences, difficulties, wrongs, 
are too sacred to be detailed even before women of whom they 
are not sure, much more before men, most of all before a press, which 
will report, and next morning cynically comment on, the secrets of 
their hearts. A free press — with all its innumerable advantages — is 
the great barrier (I say it to you deliberately) to the moving in this 
matter of that great mass of matrons for whom, in the long run, the 
movement is set on foot ; and by whom alone it can be carried out. 
At least, so it seems to me, who fight, not for the maiden so much 
as for the matron, because, if the mother be benefited, the child is 
benefited in her. And therefore I deprecate the interference in 

this movement of unmarried women But I see with 

pain this movement backed up by , and , and by other 

men and women who, unknown themselves to the English nation, 
and knowing nothing of it, and its actual opinions and habits for 
good or evil, in a word, sectarians (whether they know it or not), 
seem ready to scramble back into a society which they have in some 
cases forfeited, by mixing themselves up with questions which it is 
not for such as they to speak of, either in the study or the forum. 
I object, also, to the question of woman's right to vote or to labor, 
and above all, to woman's right to practise as physicians and sur- 
geons, being mixed up with social, i.e., sexual questions. Of 
woman's right to be a medical practitioner, I hold (as perhaps you 
may do me the honor to be aware) that it is perhaps the most im- 
portant social question hanging over us. I believe that if once 
women can be allowed to practise as freely as men, the whole 
question of the relation of the sexes, according to natural laws, and, 
therefore, according to what I believe to be the will and mind of 
God, the author of nature [will be made clearj. . . . But for 
that very reason, I am the more anxious that women should not 
27 



41 8 Charles Kings ley. 

meddle with these sexual questions, lirst, before they have acquired 
a sound, and also a general, scientific physiological training, which 
shall free them from sentiment, and confine them to physical laws 
and fact, on these matters. Second, before they have so accustomed 
the public to their ministrations, as to show them that they are the 
equals of men in scientific knowledge and practical ability (as they 
are) ; and more, that they know, as women, a hundred woman's 
secrets, which no one but a woman can know truly, and which it is 
a disgrace to modern civilization that a man should have the right 
of trymg to interpret. Therefore I deprecate, most earnestly, all 
the meddling, however pure-minded, humane, &c., which women 
have brought to bear on certain questions during the last six months. 
I do not say that they are wrong. Heaven forbid ! But 1 do say, 
that by so doing they are retarding, it may be for generations, the 
cause which they are trying to serve. And I do say (for I have 
seen it), that they are thereby mixing themselves up with the fanat- 
ical of both sexes ; with the vain and ambitious, and worst of all, 
with the prurient. Prurience, sir, by which I mean lust, which, 
unable to satisfy itself in act, satisfies itself by contemplation, usually 
of a negative and seemingly virtuous and Pharisaic character, vilify- 
ing, like St. Jerome in his cell at Bethlehem, that which he dare not 
do, and which is, after all, only another form of hysteria — that is 
the evil which we have to guard against, and we shall not do so, 
unless we keep about this whole movement a tone of modesty, 
delicacy, lofty purity, which (whatever it knows, and perhaps it 
knows all) will not, and dare not, talk aloud about it. That tone 
will not be kept, if we allow the matrons, and after them the 
maidens (by whom I mean women still under the influence of their 
fathers and mothers), or women having by their own property a 
recognised social position, to be turned out of sight in this move- 
ment by 'emancipated' women. 

" I know that the line is very difficult to draw. I see how we 
must be tempted to include, nay, to welcome as our best advocates, 
women who are smarting under social wrongs, who can speak on 
behalf of freedom with an earnestness like that of the escaped slave. 
But I feel that we must resist that temptation ; that our strength 
lies not in the abnormal, but in the normal type of womanhood. 
And 1 must say, that any sound reformation of the relations between 
woman and man, must proceed from women who have fulfilled 
well their relations as they now exist, imperfect and unjust as they 
are. That only those who have worked well in harness, will be able 
to work well out of harness ; and that only those that have been 
(as tens of thousands of women are every day) rulers over a few 
things will be fit to be rulers over many things ; and I hold this — 
in justice to myself I must say it — not merely on grounds ' theo- 
logical' so-called, but on grounds without which the 'theological' 
weigh with me very little — grounds material and physiological — on 



Woman the Teacher and Inspirer. 419 

that Toluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam, to which I try, humbly 
though confusedly, to submit all my conclusions. 

" Meanwhile, 1 shall do that which I have been doing for years 
past. Try to teach a noble freedom, to those whom I see most 
willing, faithful, conscientious in their slavery, through the path of 
self-sacrifice ; and to influence their masters likewise, to see in that 
self-sacrifice something far more divine than their own self assertion. 
To show them that wherever man and wife are really happy 
together, it is by ignoring and despising, not by asserting the subordi- 
nation of woman to man, which they hold in theory. To set forth 
in every book I write (as I have done for twenty-five years) woman 
as the teacher, the natural and therefore divine, guide, purifier, 
inspirer of the man. And so, perhaps, I may be as useful to the 
cause of chivalry, dear equally to you and me, as if I attended 
many meetings, and spoke, or caused to be spoken, many 
speeches." 

TO PROFESSOR MAX MtJLLER. 

EVERSLEY, AlCgUSt 8, 187O. 

" Accept tiiy loving congratulations to you and your people. 
The day which dear Bunsen used to pray, with tears in his eyes, 
might not come till the German people were ready, has come, and 
the German people are ready. 

"Verily God is just; and rules, too, whatever the press may 
think to the contrary. 

" My only fear is, lest the Germans should think of Paris, which 
cannot concern them, and turn their eyes away from that which 
does concern them, the re-taking Elsass (which is their own), and 
leaving the Frenchman no foot of the Rhine-bank. To make the 
Rhine a word not to be mentioned by the French henceforth, 
ought to be the one object of wise Germans, and that alone. In 

any case, with love to dear G , I am yours, full of delight and 

hope for Germany." 

To another friend he writes :— 

"As for the war, I dare not give opinion on it. It is the most 
important event since the Revolution of 1 793, and we are too near 
it yet to judge of it fairly. My belief is, that it will work good for 
generations to come. But at what an awful price ! " 

TO ALFRED WALLACE, ESQ., F.L.S. 

EvERSLEY, October 22j 1^70. 

" I have read your ' B^ssay on Natural Selection ' with equal de- 
light and profit. 



420 Charles Kings ley. 

"I wish you would re-consider pages 276-285. The facts, of 
course, are true, as all yours are sure to be ; but I have never been 
able to get rid of the belief, that every grain of sand washed down 
by a river — by the merest natural laws — is designedly put in the 
exact place where it will be needed some time or other ; or that 
the ugliest beast (though I confess the puzzle here is stranger), and 
the most devilish, has been created because it is beautiful and use- 
ful to some being or other. In fact, I believe not only in ' special 
providences,' but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity 
of special providences. I only ask you to extend to all nature the 
truth you have so gallantly asserted for man — ' That the laws 
of organic develo])ment have been occasionally used for a special 
end, just as man uses them for his special ends.' Page 370. 

" Omit 'occasionally/ and say 'always,' and you will complete 
your book and its use. In any case, it will be a contribution 
equally to science and to natural theology." * 

TO MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

EvERSLEY, November i, 1870. 

"I have at last had time to read carefully your ' Culture and 
Anarchy,' and here is my verdict if you care for it. That it is an 
exceeding wise and true book ; and likely, as such, to be little 
listened to this autumn, f but to sink into the ground and die, and 
bear fruit next spring, when the spring comes. For me, born a 
barbarian, and bred a Hebrew of the Hebrews, it has been of sohd 
comfort and teaching, 1 have had for years past an inkling that 
in Hellenism was our hope. I have been ashamed of myself, as a 
clergyman, when I caught myself saying to myself that I had rather 
have been an old Greek than an Englishman. Your book has 
justified me to myself, while it showed me where I was ungrateful 
to God and wrong. I will not trouble you with more talk, for it 
will be far worse than that which you can say to yourself any day ; 
but 1 must thank you for the book, as a moral tonic, as well as an 
intellectual purge. Ah, that I could see you, and talk with you. 
But here 1 am, trying to do my quiet work ; and given up, now, 
utterly, to physical science — which is my business in the Hellenic 
direction." 

, . : . . 

* "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection : A Series of Essays," 
by Alfred Russell Wallace. The chajjter referred to at pages 276-85 is headed, 
"Adaptation brought about by General Laws." The passage is too long to 
quote. 

f French and Prussian War-time. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

1871. 
Aged 52. 

Lecture on " The Theology of the Future " at Sion College — Expeditions of the 
Chester Natural Science Society — Lectures on Town Geology — Race Week 
at Chester — Letters on Betting — Camp at Bramshill — The Prince of Wales in 
Eversley — Prince of Wales's Illness — Lecture to Royal Artillery Officers at 
Woolwich. 

In January he gave a Jecture by request at Sion College. The 
subject he chose was " The Theology of the Future,"* in which he 
urged on the clergy the necessity of facing the great scientific facts 
of the day, and asserted his own belief in final causes. 

" I wish to speak," he says, " not on natural religion, but on 
natural theology. By the first I understand what can be learnt 
from the physical universe of man's duty to God and his neighbor ; 
by the latter I understand what can be learned concerning God 
Himself. Of natural religion I shall say nothing. I do not even 
affirm that a natural religion is possible ; but I do very earnestly 
beheve that a natural theology is possible ; and I earnestly believe 
also that it is most important that natural theology should, in every 
age, keep pace with doctrinal or ecclesiastical theology " 

He goes on to speak of Bishop Butler, Berkeley, and Paley, the 
three greatest of our natural theologians, and of the strong fact, 
that the clergy of the Church of England, since the foundation of 
the Royal Society in the 17th century, have done more for sound 
physical science than the clergy of any other denomination ; and 
expresses his belief that if our orthodox thinkers for the last hun- 
dred years had followed steadily in their steps, we should not now 
be deploring the wide and, as some think, widening gulf between 

* This lecture, or rather part of it, is incorporated into the preface of his 
" Westminster Sermons," published in 1874. 



42 2 Charles Kings ley. 

science and Christianity. He considers Goethe's claims to have 
advanced natural theology as very much over-rated, but strongly 
recommends to the younger clergy " Herder's Outlines of the 
Philosophy of the History of Man '' as a book, in spite of certain 
defects, full of sound and precious wisdom. 

He speaks of certain popular hymns of the present day as i)roofs 
of an unhealthy view of the natural w^orld, with a savor hanging 
about them of the old monastic theory of the earth being the 
devil's planet instead of God's, and gives characteristic instances, 
contrasting their key-note with that of the 104th, T47th, and 148th 
Psalms, and the noble Benedicite Omnia Opera of our Prayer-book. 
Again, he contrasts the Scriptural doctrine about the earth being 
cursed with the popular fancies on the same point. He speaks of 
the 139th Psalm as a "marvellous essay on natural theology," and 
of its pointing to the important study of embryology, which is now 
occupying the attention of Owen, Huxley, and Darwin. Then he 
goes on to " Race," and " the painful and tremendous facts " which 
it involves, which must all be faced ; believing himself that here, as 
elsewhere, Science and Scripture will be ultimately found to coin- 
cide. He presses the study of Darwin's FertiHzation of Orchids 
(whether his main theory be true or not) as a most valuable addi- 
tion to natural theology. Then, after an eloquent protest against 
the " child-dream of a dead universe governed by an absent God," 
which Carlyle and even Goethe have " treated with noble scorn," 
he speaks of that "nameless, invisible, imponderable," yet seem- 
ing omnipresent, thing which scientific men are finding below all 
pheiiomena, which the scalpel and the microscope can show — the 
life which shapes and makes — that " unknown and truly miraculous 
element in nature, the mystery of which for ever engrossing, as it 
does, the noblest minded of our students of science, is yet for ever 
escaping them while they cannot escape it." He calls on the 
clergy to have courage to tell them — what will sanctify, while it 
need never hamper, their investigations — that this perpetual and 
omnipresent miracle is no other than the Breath of God : The 
Spirit who is The Lord, and The Giver of Tife, " Let us only 
wait," he says — " let us observe — let us have patience and faith. 
Nominalism, and that ' sensationalism ' which has sprung from 
Nominalism, are running fast to seed ; Comtism seems to me its 
supreme effort, after which the whirligig of Time may bring round 



The Chester Scientific Society. 4.23 

its revenges ; and Realism, and we who hold the ReaUst creeds, 
may have our turn." 

" I sometimes dream," he adds, " of a day when it will be con- 
sidered necessary that every candidate for ordination should be 
required to have passed creditably in at least one branch of physi- 
cal science, if it be only to teach him the method of sound scien- 
tific thought. And if it be said that the doctrine of evolution, by 
doing away with the theory of creation, does away with that of final 
causes— let us answer boldly, Not in the least. We might accept 
what Mr. Darwin and Professor Huxley have written on physical 
science, and yet preserve our natural theology on exactly the same 
basis as that on which Butler and Paley left it. That we should 
have to develop it, I do not deny. That we should have to relin- 
quish it, I do." 

Extracts give a poor conception of the lecture, which made a 
profound impression, and, as private letters showed, gave hope 
and comfort to many among those who heard it delivered, or read 
it afterwards in the pages of " Macmillan's Magazine ; " and re- 
printing it, as he did, only a year before his death, it may be looked 
on as his last words on his favorite topic, and a last confession of 
his faith that, If the clergy would only play the great "r^/^" which 
is before them, science and the creeds would one day shake hands. 

Scientific subjects, and especially the distribution of plants, occu- 
pied him much at this time, and the success of his botanical class 
at Chester the previous year, decided him to follow it up with 
geology. He was busy, too, with the proofs of his West India 
book, "At Last." 

The work at Chester this year assumed larger proportions, for 
the botanical class of 1870 had been the nucleus of a Scientific 
Society in 1871; his geological lectures were much more fully 
attended, not only the number of members increased, but each 
member was allowed to bring a lady friend. Consequently, in 
preparation for walks and field lectures, he had to go over the 
ground himself a day or two before, to get thoroughly acquainted 
with its capabilities for geology and botany, and also to arrange for 
a place of rest and refreshment for the class ; and in these re- 
searches he was always accompanied by his kind friend, the Pre- 
centor, or some member of the Cathedral body, who were always 
ready with loyal and intelligent help. Expeditions now were taken 
to more distant spots ; the railway authorities had to be consulted 



424 Charles Kingsley. 

about trains — they, too, gave most willing help ; and, at the ap- 
pointed hour at the place of meeting, a happy party, numbering 
sometimes from sixty to a hundred, would find the Canon and his 
daughters waiting for them on the platform of the railway, he with 
geological hammer in hand, botany box slung over his shoulder, 
eager as any of his class for the holiday, but feeling the responsi- 
bility of providing teaching and amusement (in the highest sense of 
that word) for so many, who each and all hung upon his words. 

Those were bright afternoons, all classes mingling together ; 
people who had lived next door to each other in Chester for years 
perhaps without exchanging a word, now met on equal and friendly 
terms, in pursuit of one ennobling, object, and found themselves all 
travelling in second-class carriages together without distinction of 
rank or position, to return at the end of the long summer evening 
to their old city, refreshed and inspirited, — with nosegays of wild 
flowers, geological specimens, and happy thoughts of God's earth 
and of their fellow creatures. Perhaps the moral gain was as 
valuable as the scientific results of these field lectures, uniting 
Cathedral and town as they did in closer bonds. 

The thought of giving importance to the society by adding honor- 
ary members now occurred to the president, and he wrote to Sir 
Charles Lyell, Sir Philip Egerton, Dr. Hooker, Professors Huxley, 
Tyndall, Hughes, &c., whose distinguished names are all enrolled 
in the Chester Natural Science Society. 

TO SIR CHARLES LYELL. 

Chester, June 22, 1871. 

" I have a great favor to ask. Whether you decline or not, I am 
sure you will not be angry with me for asking. I have just started 
here a Natural Science Society — the dream of years. And I be- 
lieve it will ' march.' But I want a few great scientific names as 
honorary members. That will give my plebs, who are men of all 
ranks and creeds of course, self-respect ; the feeling that they are 
initiated actually into the great freemasonry of science, and that 
such men as you acknowledge them as pupils. 

" I have put into the hands of my geological class, numbering 
about sixty, your new ' Students' Elements.' I shall not be rude 
enough to compliment you on it ; but I may say that you seem in 
it as great as ever. These good fellows, knowing your name, and 
using your book, would have a fresh incentive to work if they but 
felt that you were conscious of their existence. 

"Let me then beg for your name, to be proposed by me as an 



Town Geology. 425 

honorary member. I ask nothing more ; but to give that would 
be not only to help them, but to help me, who already feel the 
drag of the collar (having to do all myself as far as teaching and 

inspiriting go) very heavy 

"Your most faithful and loyal pupil, 

" C. KiNGSLEY." 

Sir Charles not only gave his name, but some of his most valu- 
able works to the infant society. 

The room hitherto used at the City Library had now to be given 
up, and by the Dean's kindness the King's School was used as 
lecture-room. A preliminary lecture on the subject of physical 
science was followed by six, which will never be forgotten in 
Chester, on The Soil of the Field, The Pebbles in the Street, The 
Stones in the Wall, The Coal in the Fire, the Lime in the Mortar, 
The Slates on the Roof.* The black-board was in constant use. 
Many of those who were present must recall the look of inspira- 
tion with which his burning words were accompanied, as he went 
through the various transformations of the coal, till it reached the 
diamond, and the poetry he threw into his theme as, with kindling 
eyes, he lifted a lump of coal off the table, and held it up to his 
breathless listeners. 

Never had a man a more appreciative audience — intelligent, 
enthusiastic, affectionate. "They spring to touch," he would say, 
"at every point," and never did he receive such a warm grasp of 
the hand as from men of all ranks in the beloved old city. The 
Chester residence was one of the dearest episodes of his life, and 
when he was transferred to Westminster he could not speak of it 
without tears in his eyes. 

The following year the expeditions took place, but his lectures 
were less frequent. The society, he felt, was well established on a 
basis of its own ; and with him, over-work of brain had brought on 
a constant lassitude and numbness of the left side, which led him 
to apin-ehend coming paralysis, and forced him to confine his work 
more exclusively to preaching and the never-ceasing correspondence. 

It so happened that tiie first week of his residence in Chester, 
being always in May, was the race-week, whicli for the time being 

* These lectures, published in 1872 as "Town Geology," were dedicated to 
the members o£ the class he loved so well. 



426 Charles Ki?igsley. 

turned the streets of the venerable old city into a sort of Pande- 
monium. Trade, except in the public-houses, was stagnant, and 
the temptations of the young men in the middle and lower classes 
fiom betting and bad company, with the usual ending of a suicide, 
and the ruin of many, weighed heavily on his heart, as on that of 
the Dean and many of the residents. Most of the respectable 
tradesmen deplored the effect of the race-week, not only on the 
higher ground of morality, but because the direct losses to trade 
and to the working classes which resulted from it were so serious. A 
series of short papers on " Chester Races and their Attendant Evils" 
were started, and by the wish of Dean Howson, Mr. Kingsley 
took the subject of Betting and addressed his letter "To the Young 
Men of Chester." It is characteristic, and therefore given entire : 

" betl'ing. a letter to the young men of chester." 

" My dear Young Men, 

" The human race may, for practical purposes, be divided into 
three parts : 

" I. Honest men : who mean to do right ; and do it. 

" 2. Knaves : who mean to do wrong ; and do it. 

" 3. Fools : who mean to do whichever of the two is the pleas- 
anter. 

"And these last may be divided again into — 

" Black fools : who would rather do wrong ; but dare not ; unless 
it is the fashion. 

" White fools : who would rather do right ; but dare not ; unless 
it is the fashion. 

" Now the honest men do not need my advice ; and the knaves 
will not take it ; neither, I fear, will the black fools. They will 
agree in their secret hearts, most of them, that every word I say is 
true. But. they do not wish it to be true ; and therefore they will 
tell every one that it is not true, and try to wriggle out from under 
it by far-fetched excuses, and go back next races, 'like the dog to 
his vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire,' and bet and 
gamble boldly, because then that will be the fashion. But of the 
white fools I have hope. For they are not half bad fellows : some 
of them, indeed, are very near being very good fellows, and would 
like so much to do anything which is right and proper — only it 
takes so much trouble ; and perhaps it might look rather odd now 
and then. 

" Now let me ask them — and really I have so much liking for 
them, that I fear at times I must be one of them myself — in all 
friendliness and courtesy — Why do you bet and gamble at the 
races? Consider well what your answer will be. Certainly it will 



A Letter on Betting. 427 

not be that you do so to avoid trouble, which you so much disHke 
in general. For you must confess at once that it is more trouble 
to bet, more anxiety, and often more grief and sorrow, than it is 
not to bet, but to leave the matter alone. And while you are pre- 
])aring your reasons, I will give )'Ou two at least of mine, for leav- 
ing the matter alone. 

" The first reason (which seems to me the strongest reason which 
can be given against any matter whatsoever,) is this — that betting, 
and gambling of every kind, is in itself wrong and immoral. I do 
not say that every man who bets is an immoral man. Far from it : 
many really honest men bet ; but thai is because they have not 
considered what they are doing. Betting is wrong : because it is 
wrong to take your neighbor's money without giving him anything 
in return. Earn from him what you will, and as much as you can. 
All labor, even the lowest drudgery, is honorable ; but betting is 
not laboring nor earning : it is getting money without earning it, 
and more, it is getting money, or trying to get it, out of your 
neighbor's ignorance. 

" If you and he bet on any event, you think that your horse will 
win : he thinks that his will ; in plain English, you think that you 
know more about the matter than he : you try to take advantage 
of his ignorance, and so to conjure money out of his pocket into 
yours — A very noble and friendly attitude in which to stand to your 
neighbor, truly. That is the plain English of it : and look at it up- 
wards, downwards, sideways, inside out, you will never make any- 
thing out of betting, save this — that it is taking advantage of your 
neighbor's supposed ignorance. 

" But says some one, ' That is all fair, he is trying to do as much 
by me.' Just so : and that again is a very noble and friendly atti- 
tude for two men who have no spite against each other ; a state of 
mutual distrust and unmercifulness, looking each selfishly to his 
own gain, regardless of the interest of the other. I say, regardless. 
You know whatever you lose, he will expect you to pay, however 
much it may inconvenience you : while if he loses you expect him 
to ])ay, however much it may inconvenience him. Thus betting is 
founded on selfishness ; and the consequence is, that men who live 
by betting are, and cannot help being, the most selfish of men, and 
(I should think) among the most unhapi)y and pitiable ; for if a 
man who is given up to selfishness, distrust, and cunning, who is 
tempted every hour to treachery and falsehood, without the possi- 
bility of one noble or i)urifymg feeling throughout his whole day's 
work, or the consciousness that he has done the slightest good to 
a human being — not even as much good as an old woman at a stall 
has by selling a penny-worth of a))ples — if that man is not a piti- 
able object, 1 do not know what is. 

" But some will say, ' It is not the money I care for, but the 
amusement.' Excuse me : but if so, why do you bet for money ? 



428 Charles Kings ley. 

That question I have asked again and again, and have never got 
an answer. Why do you bet for money, and not counters, or pins, 
or pebbles ? Why, but because you want the money, to buy with it 
money's worth ? 

" Of course, I know well enough that plenty of bets pass on 
every race, which are practically quite harmless. A dozen of kid 
gloves to a lady — when you know that she will expect you to pay 
her, while you are bound not to ask her to pay you — he would be 
a very strait-laced person who could see any great harm in that ; 
any more than in a rubber of sixpenny whist. And yet it would be 
better for many a young man, for some of the finest fellows of all, 
men of eager temper, high spirit, delicate lionor, if they would 
make up their mind never to bet, even a shilling ; never to play 
cards, except for love. For gambling, like drinking, grows upon 
some men, and upon the very finest natures too. And remember, 
that in betting and gambling, the more honorable man you are, the 
worst chance you have ; gambling is almost the only thing in the 
world, in which the bad man is the stronger by very virtue of his 
badness, the good man the weaker by very virtue of his goodness. 
The man who will not cheat is no match for the man who will. 
The honorable man who will pay his debts, is no match for the dis- 
honorable man who will not. No match indeed : not even in that 
last sad catastrophe, which I have seen too often : when the hon- 
orable man, throwing good money after bad to recover his losses, 
grows desperate, tries his hand just once at foul play, and sells his 
soul — for nothing. For when he borrows the knave's tools, he 
cannot use them ; he is ashamed of himself, hesitating, clumsy ; 
is found out — as I have known such found out : and then — if he 
does not put a pistol to his own head and blow his brains out, it is 
not because he does not long, poor wretch, to do so. 

" I hold, then, that betting is itself more or less wrong and im- 
moral. But I hold, too, that betting, in three cases out of four, is 
altogether foolish ; so foolish that I cannot understand why the 
very young- men who are fondest of it, should be the very men 
who are proudest of being considered shrewd, knowing, men of the 
world, and what not. 

" They stake their money on this horse and on that. Now judg- 
ing of a horse's capabilities is an art, and a very delicate and diffi- 
cult art, depending first on natural talent, and next on experience, 
such as not one man in a thousand has. But how many betting 
young men know anything about a horse, save that he has four 
legs ? Flow many of them know at sight whether a horse is sound 
or not ? Whether he can stay or not ? Whether he is going in 
good form or not ? Whether he is doing his best or not ? Prob- 
ably five out of six of them could not sit on a race-horse without 
falling off; and then such a youth pretends to himself that he is a 
judge of the capabilities of a noble brute, who is a much better 



Tricks in Horse Racing. 429 

judge of the young gentleman's capabilities, and would prove him- 
self so within five minutes after he had got into the saddle. 

" ' But they know what the horse has done already.' Yes ; but 
not what the horse might have done. They do not know — no one 
can, who is not in the secrets of the turf — what the horse's engage- 
ments really are ; whether he has not been kept back in view of 
those engagements ; whether he will not be kept back again ; 
whether he has not been used to make play for another horse ; and 
— in one word — whether he is meant to win. 

" ' But they have special information : They have heard sport- 
ing men on whom they can rely, report to them this and the other 
wonderful secret.' Of all the various follies into which vanity, 
and the wish to seem knowing, and to keep sporting company lead 
young men — and mere boys often — this I think is about the most 
absurd. A young lad hangs about the bar of a sporting public- 
house, spending his money in drink, in hopes of over-hearing what 
the initiated Mr. This may say to the initiated Mr. That — and 
goes off with his hearsay, silly fellow, forgetting that Mr. This prob- 
ably said it out loud to Mr. That in order that he might overhear ; 
that if they have any special information, they will keep it to them- 
selves, because it is their stock-in-trade whereby they live, and they 
are not going to be foolish enough to give it away to him. Mr. 
This and That may not be dishonest men ; but they hold that in 
betting, as in love and war, all is fair ; they want to make their 
books, not to make his ; and though they very likely tell him a 
great deal which is to their own advantage, they are neither simple 
enough, nor generous enough, to tell him much that is to his ad- 
vantage ; or to prevent him from making the usual greenhorn's 
book by which he stands sure to lose five pounds, and likely to 
lose fifty. 

" ' Ah, but the young gentleman has sent his money on com- 
mission to a prophet in the newspaper, in whom he has the highest 
confidence ; he has prophesied the winner two or three times at 
least ; and a friend of his sent him money to lay on, and got back 
ever so much ; and he has a wonderful Greek name, Lynceus, or 
Polyphemus, or Typhloi)s, or something, and so he must know.' Ah ! 
fool, fool. You know how often the great Polyphemus prophe- 
sied the winner, but you do not know how often he did not. Hits 
count of course ; but misses are hushed up. And as for your friend 
getting money back, if Polyphemus let no one win, his trade would 
stop. The question is, not whether one foolish lad won by him, 
but whether tive-and-tvventy foolish lads did not lose by him. He 
has his book to make, as well as you, and he wants your money 
to pay his own debts with if he loses. He has his bread to earn, 
and he wants youj" money to earn it with ; and as for sending 
him money, you may as well throw a sovereign down a coal-pit 
and expect it to come up again with a ton of coals on its back. 



430 Charles Kingsley. 

If any young man will not believe me, because I am a parson, 
let him read, in the last chapter or two of ' Sponge's Sporting 
Tour,' what was thought of the Enoch Wriggles and Infallible 
Joes, by a better sportsman and a wiser man, than any Chester 
betting young gentleman is likely to be. 

"'Ah, but the young gentleman has a private friend. He 
knows a boy in Mr, So and So, or Lord the Other's stables, and 
he has put him up to a thing or two. He is with the horse day 
and night ; feeds him ; knows the jockey who will ride him.' Does 
he then ? What a noble and trustworthy source of information ! 
One on the strength of which it would be really worth a lad's 
while to disobey his father, make his mother miserable, and 
then rob his master's till, so sure must he be to realize a grand 
haul of money 1 A needy little stable-boy, even a comfortable big 
groom, who either tells you what he does not know, and so lies, 
or tells you what he does know, and so is probably a traitor ; and 
who in any gase, for the sake of boasting and showing off his own 
importance, or of getting half a crown and a glass of brandy and 
water, will tell you anything which comes uppermost. I had al- 
most said he i.s a fool if he does not. If you are fool enough to 
buy his facts, his cheapest and easiest plan must be to invent 
sham facts, and sell them you, while he keeps the real facts for 
his own use. For he too has his little book to make up j and like 
every one who bets, must take care of himself first, with his hand 
against every man, and every man's hand against him. 

" I could say much more, and uglier things still. But to what I 
have said, I must stand. This used to be the private history of 
small bettings at races thirty years ago ; and from all I hear, 
things have not grown better, but worse, since that time. But 
even then, before I took Holy Orders, before even I thought 
seriously at all, things were so bad that I found myself forced to 
turn my back on race-courses, not because I did not love to see 
the horses run — in that old English pleasure, taken simply and 
alone, I can fully sympathize — but because I found that they 
tempted me to betting, and that betting tempted me to compan}', 
and to passions, unworthy not merely of a scholar and a gentle- 
man, but of an honest and rational bargeman or collier. And I 
have seen what comes too often of keeping that company, of in- 
dulging" those passions. I have known men possessed of many 
virtues, and surrounded with every blessing which God could give, 
bring bitter shame and ruin, not only on themselves, but on those 
they loved, because they were too weak to shake off the one pas- 
sion of betting and gambling. And I have known men mixed up 
in the wicked ways of the world, and too often yieldmg to them, 
and falling into much wrong doiiT^-, who have somehow steered 
through at last, and escaped ruin, and settled down into a respect- 
able and useful old age, simply because they had strength enough 



All Gambliiig CondeTnned. 431 

to say — 'Whatever else I may or may not do, bet and gamble I 
will not.' And I very seriously advise my good friends the White 
Fools, to make the same resolution, and to keep it. 

" Your very good friend, 

" C. KiNGSLEY. 
" Februa7y ist, 1871." 

The local papers, of course, took up the subject, and he again 
replied. 

The following letter to his eldest son, when quite a boy at a pub- 
lic school, on his telling his father he had put into a lottery without 
thinking it any harm, will come in appropriately here, though writ- 
ten many years before : 

" My Dearest Boy, 

" There is a matter which gave me much uneasiness when you 
mentioned it. You said you had put into some lottery for the 
Derby and had hedged to make safe. 

"Now all this is bad, bad, nothing but bad. Of all habits 
gambling is the one I hate most and have avoided most. Of all 
habits it grows most on eager minds. Success and loss alike make 
it grow. Of all habits, however much civilised men may give way 
to it, it is one of the most intrinsically savage. Historically it has 
been the peace excitement of the lowest brutes in human form for 
ages past. Morally it is unchivalrous and unchristian. 

" I. It gains money by the lowest and most unjust means, for it 
takes money out of your neighbor's pocket without giving him any- 
thing in return. 

"2. It tempts you to use what you fancy your superior knowl- 
edge of a horse's merits — or anything else — to your neighbor's 
harm. 

" If you know better than your neighbor you are bound to give 
him your advice. Instead, you conceal your knowledge to win 
from his ignorance; hence come all sorts of concealments, dodges, 
deceits — I say the Devil is the only father of it. I'm sure, more- 
over, that B. would object seriously to anything like a lottery, betting, 
or gambling. 

" I hope you have not won. I should not be sorry for you to 
lose. If you have won I should not congratulate you. If you wish 
to please me, you will give back to its lawful owners the money 
you have won. If you are a loser in gross thereby, I will gladly 
reimburse your losses this time. As you had put in you could not 
in honor draw back till after the event. Now you can give back 
your nioney, saying you understand that Mr. B. and your father 
disapprove of such things, and so gain a very great moral influence. 

"^ Recollect always that the stock argument is worthless. It is 



432 Charles Kingsley. 

this : ' My friend would win from me if he could, therefore I have 
an equal right to win from him.' Nonsense. The same argument 
would prove that I have a right to maim or kill a man if only J give 
him leave to maim or kill me if he can and will. 

" 1 have spoken my mind once and for all on a matter on which 
I have held the same views for more than twenty years, and trust 
in God you will not forget my words in after life. I have seen many 
a good fellow ruined by finding himself one day short of money, 
and trying to get a little by play* or betting — and then the Lord 
have mercy on his simple soul, for simple it will not remain long. 

" Mind, I am not the least angry with you. Betting is the way 
of the world. So are all the seven deadly sins under certain rules 
and pretty names, but to the Devil they lead if indulged in, in spite 
of the wise world and its ways. 

" Your loving Pater." 

A regular member of his congregation this summer was Chief 
Justice Bovill, who was living in a neighboring parish, and drove 
over on Sunday mornings to Eversley Church. His devoutness 
made a great impression on Mr. Kingsley, who was much affected 
by his death in 1873. He writes: 

" . . . Poor dear Chief Justice Bovill is dead. Happy man ! 
But what a loss ! How well I remember giving him the Holy Com- 
munion at Eversley ; and the face was so devout, though boiling 
over with humor." 

On his return from Chester the quiet parish of Eversley was 
startled into new life by the formation of a camp in Bramshill Park 
and on Hartford Bridge Flafs, at the opening of the autumn ma- 
noeuvres, at which H.R.H. the Prince of Wales was not only 
])resent, but camped out with his regiment, the loth Hussars. 
The tumult of enthusiasm and pride of the little parish at such an 
event and the remembrance of the Prince's royal presence and 
gracious courtesy (which will never be erased from the annals of 
Eversley), had scarcely subsided, when the country was electrified 
by the news of H.R.H. being struck down with fever and at the 
point of death, and rector and parishioners grieved and prayed 
and wept together. But Mr. Kingsley' s deep personal attachment, 

* So strong was his feeling about gambling, that he would never in his own 
house allow a game of cards to be played for money. To rest his brain, he 
Hi ways played with his children in the evening for an hour or two — dominoes, 
backgammon, patience, whist, or some other game of cards. 



Loyalty and Sanatory Reform. 433 

independent of his loyal feelings, made it too painful to him to stay 
so far away ; and he started off to Lynn, from whence he could get 
hourly news, and could walk over daily to Sandringham, sending 
telegrams on to Eversley, which were put up on the church door 
and in the window of the village shop. When all danger was over, 
and the heart of the whole nation rebounded with joy and thank- 
fulness in a way that will stand in history as something unexampled, 
he preached at the Chapel Royal, St. James's, a sermon on 
Loyalty, which enabled him to press the subject of Sanatory 
Reform in connection with what, but for God's mercy, he felt might 
have been one of England's greatest disasters. 

In the autumn he was invited, through Colonel Strange, then at 
Woolwich with the Royal Artillery, to deliver a lecture at the R. A. 
Institution there. With some hesitation, but with real pleasure, 
he accepted, and was the guest of Colonel Strange, with whom he 
spent two deeply interesting days. He chose for his subject " The 
Study of Natural History." * 

* Since published in a volume of essays — " Health and Education." 
28 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

1872. 
Aged 53. 

Opening of Chester Cathedral Nave — Deaths of Mr. Maurice and Norman 
McLeod — Letters to Max Mailer — Mrs. Luard — Lecture at Birmingham 
and its Results — Lecture on Heroism at Chester — A Poem — The Athanasian 
Creed. 

The year began at Eversley with the usual winter's parish work, 
night-schools, Penny Readings, &c., which were only interrupted 
by his going to the opening of Chester Cathedral, the nave of which 
had been shut up for repairs. He writes on January 24 : 

"Scribbling in Deacle's study. Service this afternoon magnifi- 
cent. Cathedral quite full. Anthem, 'Send out Thy Light.' 
Collection, ;^io5. Cathedral looks lovely, and I have had a most 
happy day. Every one glad to see me, and enquiries after you all. 
I do love this place and people, and long to be back here for our 
spring residence." 

Mr. Maurice's death in March, and Dr. Norman McLeod's, 
saddened him, and warned him of the consequences of an over- 
worked brain. "Ah," he said, on hearing of the latter, "he is an 
instance of a' man who has worn his brain away, and he is gone as 
I am surely going." Work of all kinds seemed now to redouble; 
and the mere letters refusing sermons, lectures, church openings, 
and kind invitations from friends in England and Scotland, who 
were eager to give him the rest and refreshment which he so sorely 
needed, gave constant employment to his home secretary. He 
toiled on, dreaming of that time of "learned leisure" for which a 
Canonry he held should provide ; but which did not as yet fall to 
his lot ; and those who watched him most closely and loved him 
best felt that if rest ever came it would come too late. " Better, 
however," he said, " to wear out than rust out." 



Death of Mr. Maurice. 435 

TO PROFESSOR MAX MULLER. 

EVERSLEY, Feb. 19, 1872. 

" I have read your gallant words about Bishop Patteson in the 
Times. I did not know him ; but it is at least a comfort to me to 
read words written in such a tone in this base generation. 

" By all means let us have a memorial to him. But where ? 
In a painted window, or a cross here in England ? Surely not. 
But on the very spot where he died. There let the white man, 
without anger or revenge, put up some simple and grand monolith, 
if you will ; something at least which the dark man cannot make, 
and which instead of defacing, he will rather worship as a memorial 
to the Melanesian and his children, which they would interpret for 
themselves. So, indeed, 'he being dead would yet speak.' 

"Think over this. If it please you I will say more on the 
matter." 

TO MRS. LUARD, 
(On Mr. Maurice's Death.) 

April i^, 1872. 

"Your letter to F. was a comfort to me, as is every word from 
any one who loved and appreciated him. You, too, saw that his 
work was done. I had seen death in his face for, I may almost say, 
two years past, and felt that he needed the great rest of another life. 
And now he has it. 

"I see that you were conscious of the same extraordinary per- 
sonal beauty which I gradually discovered in his face. If I. were 
asked, Who was the handsomest, and who the most perfectly gen- 
tlemanlike man you ever met ? I should answer, without hesitation, 
Mr. Maurice." 

In the autumn he went to Birmingham, where he had often been 
asked to give lectures. It was a town for which he had great 
respect, as being one of the best drained in England, and where in 
all the cholera visitations there had been the fewest cases of cholera 
(in one visitation only one, and that an imported case), rte had 
been urged, and could not well refuse, to be President of the Mid- 
land Institute for the year. As President, he was bound to give 
the Inaugural Address. The subject he chose was the Science of 
Health, and the noble response given to his lecture, will make it 
long remembered in Birmingham. I^oi'd Lyttelton was in the chair, 
aud received him with marked kindness. It was one of' his best 
and most suggestive lectures. Special reporters were sent down 
by leading London newspapers, and the following morning the 



436 Charles Kingsley. 

" Times " gave him a leading article, which, after speaking of other 
Institutes and other speakers, adds : 

" But everybody was prepared to expect Canon Kingsley to 
exhibit the development of the Institute in a more striking and 
picturesque light. Every one of his topics and suggestions appears 
to us strictly in the lines of an Inaugural Address to the Institute 
of a great manufacturing town like Birmingham, Yet we could 
fancy that some, even among the most hopeful originators of this 
movement, would have opened their eyes upon hearing the acqui- 
sition of the Spanish and Portuguese languages urged as a means 
of making one's fortune in South America, and on finding, put in 
the first place, nearly to the exclusion of all other subjects, the 
necessity of studying the laws of health and strength, of physical suc- 
cession, natural selection, and morbid degeneracy, especially as 
illustrated in the dwarfed and enervated population of our large 
towns, in unhappy marriages, and expiri-ng families. We feel really 
obliged to the Canon for taking the bull by the horns, and telling 
these townsfolk some very simple truths, with the further remark 
that they have only to use their eyes, their memories, and their 
understandings, and then they will learn a great deal more than 
he can tell them." 

The Lecture bore fruit at once. A gentleman of Birmingham 
(a manufacturer), who had been long wishing to promote scientific 
knowledge among the working- classes of Birmingham, and had 
long deplored the ignorance prevailing on the subject of health, 
without the idea occurring to him of making it a distinct object of 
study, on hearing the address immediately decided to devote the 
sum of 2,500/. to found classes and Lectures on Human Physiology 
and the Science of Health, believing, with Mr. Kingsley, that if 
people's interest could only be excited on the subject, physical 
improvement would be followed by moral and mental improvement, 
and the hospitals, and even prisons and madhouses, would be 
relieved of many cases which have their origin in mere ignorance 
of the laws of health and physiology. 

The immediate result of this lecture was perhaps the highest 
earthly reward ever granted to him, and had he lived to see the still 
greater results which Mr. Ryland's letter point to, his soul would 
have been satisfied. He may see it now — God knows ! 

The Chester City Library and Reading-room were just now very 
low in funds, and in want of modern books ; and the committee 



Lectures on Heroism. 437 

applied to the Canon to help them out of their difficulties. He 
writes at once to Mr. Shone from Eversley : 

" Of course — what did I come to Chester for, if not to help in 
such a case ? Will you and your friends make all arrangements, 
and send me a reminder about the beginning of November, that I 
may have time to think over something which may interest our dear 
good Chester folk. I should like you and my friends to look 
at what I said at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, about the 
science of health and physical education. I spoke from long 
knowledge ; and be sure we all need to think about the subject 
very seriously, else our grandchildren will be by no means such big 
men as you are ! " 

Some days later he writes : " The subject of my lecture will be 
Heroism. I mean it to be a prologue to a set of lectures which I 
hope to give at Chester during my next residence " 
(in May, 1873). This residence never took place ; but the Lec- 
ture on Heroism* was given on November 22, 1872, most success- 
fully, as far as its pecuniary object, and doubtless it found a 
response in many hearts. The Duke of Westminster, foremost as 
usual in giving the lead to all noble thought and noble work in the 
old city, was in the chair. The next evening, after attending the 
last chapter, at which he was ever present, the Canon gave a lec- 
ture on Deep-Sea Dredging to the Scientific Society, of which he 
was still president — the last words he spoke to his beloved class. 

It was a year of hard work, and owing to this and to the increas- 
ing infirmities of his mother, who was in her 85th year, and lived 
with him, he scarcely left home for more than a few days. The 
three months now at Chester and the four yearly sermons at Wind- 
sor, Sandringham, Whitehall, and St. James's, made him unwilling 
to give up his Eversley people for a single Sunday. So that he had 
no intermission of work ; and his only rest this year was four days 
in the English Lakes in June, yachting for the inside of a week with 
Lord Carnarvon in autumn, and a short visit to his dear friends 
General and Mrs. Napier, at Oaklands ; indeed, since he returned 
from the West Indies, nearly three years before, he had preached 
every Sunday once, if not twice. 

The late autumn brought a time of severe anxiety and illness in 
his household ; but once again before clouds thickened, his heart 

* Republished in "Health and Education." 



438 Charles Kingsley. 

bubbled up into song, and after the last meet of the foxhounds, at 
which he was ever present, in front of Bramshill House — a sight he 
had loved for years, and to which he always took his children and 
friends, — he put these lines into his wife's hands : 

November 6, 1872. 
. . "THE DELECTABLE DAY. 

" The boy on the famous grey pony, 
Just bidding goodbye at the door. 
Plucking up maiden heart for the fences 
Where his brother won honor of yore. 

" The walk to ' the Meet ' with fair children. 
And women as gentle as gay, — 
Ah ! how do we male hogs in armor 
Deserve such companions as they ? 

" The afternoon's wander to windward. 
To meet the dear boy coming back ; 
And to catch, down the turns of the valley, 
The last weary chime of the pack. 

" The climb homeward by park and by moorland. 
And through the fir forests again, 
While the south-west wind roars in the gloaming, 
Like an ocean of seething chanipagne. 

"And at night the septette of Beethovenj 
And the grandmother by in her chair. 
And the foot of all feet on the sofa 
Beating delicate time to the air. 

"Ah, God ! a poor soul can but thank Thee 
.For such a delectable day ! 
Though the fury, the fool, and the swindler. 
To-morrow again have their way ! ' ' 

He was asked and consented this year to join the Committee for 
the Defence of the Athanasian Creed. He had previously signed 
addresses suggesting a modification or explanation of the damna- 
tory clauses from the Provinces of Canterbury and York, when the 
Creed seemed most in danger. This apparent ambiguity of pur- 
pose created some surprise, but in reality his views had not changed 
materially on this point since he took holy orders. 

While paying a visit in Weybridge in 1873, ^^ was asked to write 



A Character Album. 439 

some answers to the folIcAving questions in a book kept for the 
Autographs of Hterary men. The answers are characteristic, and 
therefore interesting : 

" Favorite character in history? David. 

" Favorite kind of Hterature ? Physical science. 

" Favorite author? Spenser. 

" Favorite male and female character in fiction ? (No answer 
given.) 

" Favorite artist ? Leonardo da Vinci. 

" Favorite composer ? Beethoven. 

" Favorite dramatic performance ? A pantomime. 

" Favorite public character ? (No answer given.) 

" Favorite kind of scenery ? Wide flats or open sea. 

" Place at home and abroad you most admired ? Clovelly. . 

" Favorite reminiscence ? July, 1839. 

" Favorite occupation ? Doing nothing. 

" Favorite amusement ? Sleeping. 

" What you dislike most ? Any sort of work. 

" Favorite topics of conversation ? Whatever my companion 
happens to be talking about. 

" And those you dislike most ? My own thoughts. 

" What you like most in woman ? Womanliness. 

" What you dislike most ? Unwomanliness. 

" What you like most in man ? Modesty. 

" What you dislike most ? Vanity. 

" The character you most dislike ? Myself. 

" Your ambition ? To die. 

" Your ideal ? The One ideal. 

" Your hobby ? Fancying I know anything. 

" The virtue you most admire ? Truth. 

" The vice to which you are most lenient? All except lying. 

" Your favorite motto or proverb ? ' Be strong.' 

"Charles Kingsley." 

His year closed at Eversley with his three children round him, 
his eldest daughter having returned safe from a long visit to her 
brother in Colorado, and a perilous journey with him and some 
American friends through Mexico, who were " prospecting " for the 
carrying on of the narrow gauge railway which her brother had as- 
sisted in building from Denver down to Colorado Springs, and 
which the company hoped to take dirough the heart of Mexico 
down to the city itself. The Report made by his son on the survey 
had been a great source of pride and joy to his father, and seemed 



440 Charles Kingsley. 

to open great prospects for his own future, and for that of civiliza- 
tion, which, however, were finally frustrated by the Mexican Gov- 
ernment. During the last six months the Rectory had the pleasant 
addition of a young German tutor, who was preparing the youngest 
boy for a public school. Dr. Karl Schulze had been all through the 
Franco-Prussian war, and had come to England to learn the lan- 
guage before settling in his professorship in Berlin. His society 
was a great pleasure to Mr. Kingsley, who in return had the same 
magnetic attraction for him, as for all young men who came within 
his influence. 



O 



( 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

1873-4. 

Aged 54-5. 

Harrow-on-the-Hill — Canonry of Westminster — His Son's Return — His Mother's 
Death — Parting from Chester — Congratulations — Sermon and Letters on Tem- 
perance — Preaching in Westminster Abbey — Voyage to America — Eastern 
Cities and Western Plains — Canada — Niagara — The Prairie — Salt Lake City 
— Yo Semite Valley arid Big Trees — San Francisco — Illness — Rocky Moun- 
tains and Colorado Springs — Last Poem — Return Home — Letter from John 
G. Whittier. 

Some months of this year were spent at Harrow, where his youngest 
son was at school, a change to higher ground having been recom- 
mended for some of his family, to secure which the Bishop gave 
him leave of non-residence : but he went regularly for his Sundays 
to Eversley, and himself helped to prepare the candidates for the 
first confirmation that, thanks to the kindness of Bishop Wilber- 
force, had ever been held in his own parish church. ITie letters 
are few this year. 

While at Harrow it was with mingled feelings that he received on 
Lady Day a letter from the Prime Minister. 

"I have to propose to you, with the sanction of her Majesty, 
that in lieu of your canonry at Chester, you should accept the va- 
cant stall in Westminster Abbey. I am sorry to injure the people 
of Chester ; but I must sincerely hope your voice will be heard 
within the Abbey, and in your own right." 

There was a strong battle in his heart between the grief of giving 
up Chester and the joy of belonging to the great Abbey, a position 
which included among many advantages the blessing he had long 
craved for, of laying down his pen as a compulsory source of income, 
at once and for all, and devoting his remaining writing powers and 
strength to sermons alone. His feeHngs are best told in his own 
letters. The day before he received Mr. Gladstone's letter, he 



442 Charles Kings ley, 

had been writing to a member of his scientific class, his friend and 
coadjutor, Mr. Shepheard of Bridge Street Row, Chester, on some 
point connected with his work thei'e, which ends^thus. " Give my 
love — that is the broadest and h.onestest word — to all the dear 
Chester folk, men, women, and children, and say that I long for 
May I, to be back again among them." But on the 27th he wrote 
in lower spirits : 

" A thousand thanks for the MSS., which have been invaluable 
to me. The programme of your Society for the year makes me at 
once proud and envious. P'or now I have to tell you that I have 
just accepted the vacant stall at Westminster, and shall, in a week 
or two, be Canon of Chester no more. Of course, I had to take 
it for my children's sake. Had I been an old bachelor, I would 
never have left Chester. Meanwhile I would sooner be Canon of 
Westminster than either dean or bishop. But I look back longingly 
to Chester. Shall we ever go up Hope Mountain, or the Halkin 
together again, with all those dear, courteous, sensible people ? 
My eyes fill with tears when I think of it. 

" Give them all my love. I must find some means, by the 
papers or otherwise, of telling them all at once what I owe to their 
goodness of heart. 

" Ever yours, 

" C. KlNGSLEY." 

His eldest son, to his father's great joy, had just returned from a 
railway survey in Mexico for a holiday ; and his aged mother, now 
in her 86tli year, and so long the inmate of his home, just lived to 
know of, and rejoice in, her son's appointment, and to see her 
grandson once more before her death on the i6th of April. 

Letters of mourning and congratulation poured in from Chester. 
Canon Blomfield, the first canon who welcomed him there in 1869, 
writes : 

" Of course one might expect that such an event would occur, 
and before very long. It was quite clear that you ought to be 
lifted up to a higher degree in the scale of ecclesiastical preferment, 
and to find a larger sphere for your powers. But yet, when the 
time comes to lose you from Chester, it comes as a blow on one's 
feelings. I don't know how the Chester people will get over it. 
They will be like the schools of the prophets when Elijah was taken 
from them. We shall no less miss you in the cathedral, and in the 
chapter, and in the matter, especially of the King's School. And 
then whom shall we have to replace you ?".... 



Canon of Westminster. 443 

Such words from a man so much his senior, and whom he so deeply 
respected, are a strong testimony, and as Canon Blomfield gene- 
rously writes : 

" A sincere one, to a man, whom, to know, was to love and to rev- 
erence as one who indefatigably employed his great powers in the 
good of his fellow men and for the glory of God." 

" It will be pleasant," says Canon Hildyard, another valued 
member of the Chapter, also his senior, " among the regrets felt by 
the Chapter, to remember what tae had. I say tve, because I think 
each member of the Chapter will say and think the same of you in 
all your bearings to us. The whole of Chester mourns." 

" I ought, my dear Mr. Kingsley," writes the Archbishop of 
Canterbur)', on April 9, "to have written before now to welcome 
you to the great Abbey, which I do very heartily. It is a great 
sphere for a man who, hke you, knows how to use it." .... 

While from his own diocese Bishop Wilberforce wrote : 

*'My dear Kingsley, 

" 1 have just seen an authoritative statement of your appoint- 
ment to the Canonry at Westminster, and I must tell you the 
pleasure that it gives me. It is so just an acknowledgment of your 
merits : it gives so much better a pedestal from which you may 
enlighten many, that I rejoice unfeignedly at it ; and then it is a 
great personal pleasure to me. I am proud to have you in my old 
Collegiate Church ; and I hope it may favor more of that personal 
intercourse between us which has been so much increased since I 
came to this diocese (Winchester), and which has given me such 
great pleasure. 

" I am, my dear Kingsley, 
"Yours most sincerely, and let me add affectionately, 

" S. WiNTON." 

The new Canon of Westminster little thought when he read this 
letter, that his first sermon in the Abbey after his installation would 
be one among many public lamentations for the sudden death of 
his diocesan. 

The page of his Chester life fitly closes with a letter from Dean 
Howson, whose never-failing kindness and friendship he valued so 
truly. 

FROM THE DEAN OF CHESTER. 

" I have been asked to write a brief notice of that part of Charles 
Kingsley' s life which was spent in close connection with the city 



444 Charles Kingsley. 

and cathedral of Chester ; and it is a request— considering from 
whom it comes — concerning which I feel, not only that I cannot 
refuse it, but that it must be a true pleasure to me to act upon it to 
the best of my power. I should be sorry, indeed, if this task had 
been assigned to any one else ; for my own relations with him here 
were of the happiest kind, and I have a hvely sense of the good 
he has left behind, as the result of three short official residences in 
Chester, and a few occasional visits to the place. 

" Since the remarks in this paper are necessarily of a personal 
character, and since they must relate particularly to the religious 
side of the subject, it seems to me natural to begin with the first 
meeting which, so far as I remember, I ever had with Canon 
Kingsley. This took place at Cambridge, I must confess that at 
that time I had a strong prejudice against him. I had read 'Alton 
Locke,' on its first appearance, and had thought it very unjust to 
the University of which both he and I were members. It seemed 
to me quite out of harmony with my recollections of a place, from 
which I was conscious of having received the utmost benefit. I 
must say here, in passing, that the passages to which I refer have 
been so modified by notes in the last edition, that warm commen- 
dation has taken the place of blame ; and I am not sure that the 
pendulum of his strong feeling did not, on this last occasion, swing 
too far in its new direction. This, however, belongs to a subse- 
quent period. At the time to which I refer the book remained 
unchanged. Besides the impression which it made upon me, I had 
acquired a general notion of Mr. Kingsley's tone of mind, through 
conversation and through casual reading : and the notion amounted 
to this ; that 1 regarded him as the advocate of a self-confident, 
self-asserting Christianity, whereas the view I had been led to take 
of the religion which has been revealed to us, and which is to 
save us here and hereafter, was extremely different. Under these 
circumstances I happened to be appointed Hulsean Lecturer at 
Cambridge, he being then Professor of Modern History. I had 
taken for my subject the Character of St. Paul ; and being, in one 
of my sermons,- about to preach on the Apostle's ' tenderness and 
sympathy,' which, to my mind, involved a sense of utter weakness, 
and a continual self-distrust, I was very uncomfortable. I thought 
that 1 should be understood to be preaching against Professor 
Kingsley. Such a course would have been, to the utmost degree, 
foreign to my feehngs ; and yet I was bound to do justice to my 
convictions concerning, not only St. Paul's character, but Chris- 
tianity itself, in this respect. My surprise, therefore, was great, 
when, at the close of the service, and after the dispersion of the 
congregation, I met Canon Kingsley at the south door of St. Mary's. 
He was waiting for me there, that he might express his sympathy 
with what I had said in the sermon ; and this he did, not merely 
with extraordmary cordiality, but literally, I may say, with tears of 



Dean Howsons Meinories. 445 

approval. It was a moment of my life which made a deep impres- 
sion on me. It not only caused me to be conscious that I had 
made a mistake, but it formed in me a warm personal regard for 
Mr. Kingsley, though, at that time, I had no expectation of any 
frequent opportunities of seeing him. 

" For some time afterwards our meetings were only casual, and 
our acquaintance was very slight ; and I must confess that when a 
letter came to me from him to tell me that he had been appointed a 
Canon of Chester, in succession to Dr. Moberly, who had been 
made Bishop of Salisbury, I was full of fear. There seemed to me 
an incongruity in the appointment. I fancied that there was no 
natural affinity between the author of ' Alton Locke ' and cathe- 
dral life. Here again I soon found that I had made a mistake. I 
might, indeed, have reflected that cathedral institutions, even under 
their present restricted conditions, have great capacity for varied 
adaptation, and that 1 myself had been diligent in giving expression 
to an opinion of this kind. And here I may remark that the cathe- 
dral stall in question has had a very curious recent history, illus- 
trative of the correctness of this remark. It has been held in suc- 
cession by three men of eminence — Dr. M'Neile, Dr. Moberly, 
and Mr. Kingsley — differing from one another as much as possible 
in habits of thought, but in each case with beneficial results to the 
city of Chester, though in very various ways. 

"Now, to describe particularly Canon Kingsley's work and use- 
fulness in Chester, I must note first the extraordinary enthusiasm 
with Avhich he entered upon his connection with the place. Ches- 
ter has certainly a very great charm for an imaginative mind, and 
for any one who is fond of the picturesque aspects of history ; and 
upon him it told immediately, giving him from the first a greater 
delight than he would have felt elsewhere in the work v/hich he 
found here to do. And with this enthusiasm I must note his old- 
fashioned courtesy, loyalty, and respect for official position. ] 
suppose his political and social views would have been termed 
'liberal ; ' but his liberalism was not at all of the conventional type. 
I should have described him as a mixture of the Radical and the 
Tory, the aspect of character which is denoted by the latter word 
being, to my apprehension, quite as conspicuous as that which is 
denoted by the former. Certainly he was very different from 
the traditional Whig. I have spoken of his respect for official 
position. I believe that to have caused inconvenience to me, to 
have done what I did not Uke, to have impeded me in my efforts 
to be useful, would have given him the utmost pain. That he was 
far my superior in ability and knowledge made no dift'erence. I 
happened to be Dean, and he happened to be Canon ; and this was 
quite enough. From the first letter which he wrote to me announ- 
cing his appointment, till the time when, to our great regret, he 
left Chester for Westminster, he showed to me the utmost consid- 



446 Charles Kingsley. 

eration. I record this, that I may express my gratitude ; but I 
note it also as a mark of character. 

"The opportunities of usefulness, which he found and employed 
at Chester, were not altogether limited to the city. He had a 
beneficial relation to the diocese at large, the mention of which 
ought not to be entirely omitted. Mere popularity in a canon of 
a cathedral, who is eminent for literary and scientific attainments, 
and who is known to take a large and kindly interest in his fellow- 
men, is no slight benefit to a diocese. But Canon Kingsley did 
useful work in Chester and South Lancashire by preaching at 
choral festivals, taking part in the proceedings of scientific societies, 
promoting the restoration of the cathedral to which he belonged, 
and the like. Under the present system, indeed, of capitular insti- 
tutions, a cathedral cannot do as much as might be desired for the 
diocese in which it is placed ; but such general work as was done 
here by Canon Kingsley, and more especially, the spirit in which 
he did it, aided to diff"use through the neighborhood the idea that 
cathedral institutions have inherently a capacity for diocesan ex- 
pansion. 

" In the cathedral city itself, with which he is connected, it is 
desirable that a canon should do some definite thing, and one which 
is not likely to be spoilt and broken by intermittent residence. This 
one thing, suitable to his own tastes, and easily within the range of 
his powers. Canon Kingsley perceived at Chester as desirable to be 
done ; and he definitely did it with all his heart and with complete 
success. By establishing a Society for the study of Natural Science, 
he brought to view much latent knowledge, promoted co-operation 
among those who had been isolated, encouraged those who knew 
little to learn more, and those who knew nothing to learn some- 
thing. He promoted these studies by excellent lectures; and his 
personal help, readily rendered on every side, was invaluable. For 
the making of such assistance effectual, he had many high qualities 
— a quiet and kindly sympathy, a genial humor combined with 
intense earnestness, and a disdain of the silly social distinctions 
which separate those who ought to be acquainted with one another. 
He had a quick eye for vegetable forms, and a large experience in 
judging of geological facts. Others may have known more than he 
did of many sciences ; but he could teach what he knew ; and he 
had another most important faculty — he could make others work, 

"All this enthusiasm for Natural Science — to revert to a point 
which was touched before — might at first seem out of harmony with 
the grave and formal traditions of cathedral life. Even if it were 
so, there could be no objection to this, but rather a great advantage 
in it. The clerical office ought to touch human interests on every 
side ; an ancient institution ought to diffuse light into fresh places ; 
the meeting of the old and the new never occurs more properly 
or more usefully, than in a cathedral. But precedents for what has 



Religiotis Life in Chester. 447 

happened to us, to our great benefit, in Chester, are suppHed by 
the connection of Buckland and Sedgwick and Mozeley with West- 
minster and Norwich and Bristol. In our own cathedral, too, there 
seems a special invitation to associations of this kind. For not 
only do our Gurgoyles and Corbels betray the general mediaeval 
interest felt of old in animal and vegetable forms, but carvings in 
wood and stone, even in the interior of the church, show that here 
there was a lavish enjoyment of such observation and imitation. 
As an illustration of what I mean at this moment, I may say that 
in this building there are monkeys in the midst of the crockets of 
some canopies, and that Canon Kingsley, in the midst of Divine 
Service, was once observed to start, when his eye caught the sight 
of this strange creature in an unexpected place. 

" But it is time now to turn to the religious and most serious side 
of his life in Chester; and this I must say, he was most careful and 
conscientious in attendance at the cathedral services, most reveren- 
tial in public worship, most diligent in preaching. There is a 
remarkable passage in the statutes of this cathedral, which charges 
the Dean and Canons — and even pleads with them ' by the mercies 
of God,' thai inasmuch as the Divine Word is 'a light to our feet 
and a lamp to our path,' they be diligent in preaching ; and though 
the number of sermons prescribed in the year is so small, as almost, 
after such a preamble, to provoke a smile, yet the spirit of the in- 
junction is excellent ; and in this spirit Canon Kingsley acted. He 
is remembered here as a preacher of great power ; he had always 
large congregations, and tliey tended, towards the end of his time, 
to increase rather than to diminish. Through his preaching — in 
consequence of his known interest in science, and his large sym- 
pathy with humanity — religious truth found its way to many hearts, 
which otherwise might have been nearly closed to such influence. 
As to the sermons themselves, several of those which have been 
published in his volume of ' Westminster Abbey Sermons ' were 
first preached here at Chester. I will make mention of two, the 
delivery of which I remember very distinctly. One was preached 
from the 104th Psalm, and dealt with the subject of the physical 
suffering of the animals around us, caused by their preying on one 
another. ' The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat 
from God.' He felt keenly all the m3fstery of pain in those creat- 
ures that had not deserved it by sin ; and yet he had an undis- 
turbed belief that God is good. The other was a sermon on 
Prayer : ' Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.' 
Some had doubted, in consequence of certain discussions then 
recent, whether the preacher did not so limit the use of prayer, as 
to cause it really to be no comfort to us at all. But those who 
heard this sermon found their doubts on this subject removed. 
Speaking from my own point of view, I by no means say that I 
always agreed with Canon Kingsley' s mode of presenting Divine 



448 Charles Kingsley. 

Truth, and of arranging its proportions ; but there was far less 
divergence between us than I had expected to find ; and he ex- 
hibited, with more force than any one else that I have ever heard, 
certain aspects of Christianity, which to both of us seemed of the 
utmost importance. 

" In connection with his efforts for the moral and religious bene- 
fit of the people of this place I must mention one subject, which 
lo me is of overwhelming interest, and which no reasonable man 
-can say is unimportant. I refer to the Chester Races, which, to 
speak in plain English and in simple words, hinder here everything 
that is good, and promote everything that is bad. It is not my 
business, in this place, to say much of my own strong convictions 
upon this subject ; but I may record, with grateful satisfaction, the 
harmony which subsisted regarding it between Canon Kingsley and 
myself. He was well acquainted with the whole subject of modern 
Horse-racing ; and he deserved to be listened to when he main- 
tained that, instead of being a manly sport, it had become a selfish 
and fraudulent trade. Among the efforts which were made during 
his connection with Chester, to give a right direction to public 
opinion in this matter, and to diminish the mischief caused here 
by the system, some small pamphlets were published, exhibiting 
its evils on various sides. Canon Kingsley wrote one on ' Betting.' 
It was very short, but it was admirable ; and I think an account 
of his life would be incomplete without a notice of this small pub- 
lication. 

" Before I conclude, I must refer to the good done here by Can-- 
on Kingsley, through remarks made in the course of casual con- 
versations. Great effects are produced in this way by certain men ; 
and he produced them without being aware of it. I will simply 
give two slight illustrations, each having reference to Science. On 
being asked how he reconciled Science and Christianity, he said, 
' By believing that God is love.' On another occasion, when the 
slow and steady variation of Mollusca, traced from stratum to stra- 
tum, was pointed out by a friend, with the remark that Darwin's 
explanation would hardly be considered orthodox, he observed, 
' My friend, God's orthodoxy is truth; if Darwin speaks the tr-uth, 
he is orthodox.' I may remark here that Kingsley's bent was, in 
his own opinion, more towards Science than towards Literature. 
He once said something to this effect, that he would rather be low 
on the roll of Science than high on that of Literature. 

" This is a poor and inadequate account of a passage in Canon 
Kingsley's life, which was productive of great good in one particu- 
lar city and neighborhood, and which has left among us here, in 
one sense indeed, a very sorrowful, but, in a higher sense, a very 
cheerful, recollection. Various facts and incidents, for which room 
cannot here be found, might have been mentioned, as, for instance, 
his warm and practical interest in the development of our Cathedral 



Farewell to Chester. 449 

School, which, under its new conditions, has already entered upon 
a successful career ; or, again, the general lectures which he deliv- 
ered in Chester to audiences far larger than can commonly be as- 
seinbled here for such a purpose. But my aim has been simply to 
give a truthful impression of the life, and character, and work, 
which we observed, and from which we have derived advantage. It 
must be added, in conclusion, that three permanent memorials of 
Charles Kingsley have been established in Chester. On his scien- 
tific side he is commemorated by a prize founded in connection 
with the Natural History Society which he established : on his lit- 
erary side by a marble bust, executed by Mr. Belt, which is to be 
placed in the Cathedral Chapter-house ; while the religious aspect 
of his life and work are suitably recorded, in the midst of the beau- 
tiful tabernacle-work of the cathedral, by a restored stall which 
bears his name. His best and most faithful memory, however, 
remains in the seeds of good which he has sown in the minds and 
hearts of those over whom his influence was exerted." 

In July he went to Chester to say good-bye, and to -join the 
Nave Choir and Scientific Society in an excursion into Wales. 

His kind friends insisted on his still keeping the ofhce of Presi- 
dent to the Scientific Society. Professor Hughes is his distin- 
guished successor, who closed his Inaugural Lecture in 1874 with 
these words : 

" Let us then try to carry on our Society in the spirit that per- 
vaded all the work of him to whom this Society owes everything — 
whose loss, when last I came among you we had so recently to de- 
plore ; a spirit of fearless and manly grappling with difficulties — a 
spirit of vigorous, prompt, and rigorous carrying out of whatever 
was taken in hand — a spirit of generous and hearty co-operation 
with fellow-workers — a wide range of interests — not meaning by 
this, scattered desultory thought — but thought, like Napoleon's, 
ready to be concentrated at once where the battle must be fought." 

Some of Canon Kingsley's friends in their congratulations ex- 
pressed the hope that this distinction might be a stepping stone to 
a higher post, but he had no ambition beyond a stall at Westmin- 
ster and the Rectory of Eversley. 

" A thousand thanks," he says to Sir Charles Bunbury, " for 
your congratulations, and Lady Bunbury' s. Let me assure you 
that your view of my preferment, as to its giving me freer access to 
scientific society, libraries, &c., is just mine, with this addition, 
that it will give me freer access to you. So far from looking on it 
29 



450 Charles Kingsley. 

as an earnest of future preferment, I acquiesce in it as all I want, 
and more than I deserve. What better fate than to spend one's 
old age under the shadow of that Abbey, and close to the highest 
mental activities of England, with leisure to cultivate myself, and 
write, if I will, deliberately, but not for daily bread ? A deanery 
or bishopric would never give me that power. It cannot be better 
than it is ; and most thankful to God am I for His goodness." 

To him in his great humility the outburst of sympathy on all 
sides was only a surprise : while to those who knew the history of 
his life it was a triumph, which wiped out many bitter passages in 
the past, but a triumph tempered by the fear that it came too late 
to save the overstrained brain. The candle had already burnt 
down, and though light and flame still flared up, it flared as from 
the socket. His eldest son returning at the moment to share in 
the joy of his father's elevation, was so much struck with his 
broken appearance, that he urged upon him rest and change and a 
sea voyage before he entered on a position of fresh responsibility. 
This, however, he refused, though it was strongly recommended by 
medical advisers, and decided not to go to America till the follow- 
ing year, when the repairs of both homes — at Eversley and the 
house in the Cloisters, would oblige him to take a holiday. 

He preached in the Abbey for the Temperance Society * in 
April, for which at once he put himself under the orders of his 
Dean. To it this letter refers, 

Eversley, April 2t,^ 1873. 
"My dear Dean, 

" Many thanks for your letter and its instructions, which I will 
follow. Kindly answer me this — to me important — question. 

" Have you any objection to my speaking, in my sermon, in 
favor of opening the British Museum, &c., to the public on Sunday 
afternoons ? Of course I shall do so without saying anything vio- 
lent or uncharitable. But I have held very strong and deliberate 
opinions about this matter for many years ; and think that the 
opening of these Public Institutions would not only stop a great 
deal of Sunday, and therefore of Monday drunkenness, but would 
— if advocated by the clergy — enable the Church to take the wind 
out of the sails of the well-meaning, but ignorant, Sunday League, 

* This sermon was the foundation of a vpluable article in " Good Words," 
called the " Tree of Knowledge," since published in the volume, " Health and 
Education." 



The Qtiestion of Total Abstinence. 451 

and prove herself — what she can prove herself in other matters if 
she has courage — the most liberal religious body in these isles. 
But if you, with your superior savoir-faire, think it better for me to 
be silent as yet, I obey." 

On the same subject he writes to J. Barfleet, Esq., J. P., of 
Worcester : 

" I am not a ' total abstainer ; ' but that does not prevent my 
wishing the temperance movement all success, and wishing success, 
also, to your endeavor to make people eat oatmeal. I am sorry to 
say that they will not touch it in our southern counties; and that 
their food is consequently deficient in phosphates and they in bone, 
in comparison with the northern oatmeal eating folk, who are still 
a big-boned race, 

" I have told them this ; and shall again. For growing children 
oatmeal is invaluable. Meanwhile, we must not forget to supply 
the system with hydro-carbons (especially if we lessen the quantity 
of beer) in order to keep the fire alight, or we get a consumptive 
tendency, as in many oatmeal eating Scotch, who, with tall and 
noble frames, die of consumption, because they will not eat bacon, or 
any fats in sufficient quantity. Hence not only weakness of tissue, 
but want of vital heat, and consequent craving for whiskey. The 
adjustment of the elements of food in their right proportions is almost 
the most important element in ensuring temperance." .... 

His first residence at Westminster was in September, during a 
time in which London was considered " empty." He preferred 
these quiet months, as the congregations were composed chiefly of 
men of the middle and lower class, whose ear he wished to gain, and 
preached during September and November to vast congregations 
twice a day. Speaking of this, he says : — 

" I got through the sermons without any bodily fatigue, and 
certainly there were large congregations worth speaking to. But 
the responsibility is too great for me^ and I am glad I have only two 
months' residence, and that in a quiet time. What must it be in 
May and June ? " 

To his wife, who was ill in the country, he writes from the Clois- 
ters in November : 

" I ought to have written yesterday, but I was very busy with two 
sermons and early communion. The sermons, I am assured, were 
heard, and R. says, the attention of the congregation was great. If 
I find I can get the ear of that congregation, it will be a work to 



452 Charles Kingsley. 

live for, for the rest of my life. What more can a man want? 
And as for this house, the feeling of room in it is most pleasant, and 
the beauty outside under this delicious gleamy weather, quite lifts 

my poor heart up a-while I regret much that I am 

leaving just as I seemed to be getting hold of people. But I do 
not think I could have stood the intense excitement of the Sundays 
much longer." 

His last sermon in 1873 i'^ the Abbey was on "The Beatific 
Vision," and those who heard him were impressed by the deep 
solemnity of his words and manner as he, in prospect of leaving 
Europe, bade farewell to a congregation which he had already begun 
to love.* 

In the autumn he wrote three articles on Health, Physical Edu- 
cation, and Sanitary subjects, to which and to his sermons he 
proposed to devote the remaining years of his life, and made prepa- 
rations for his American journey ; and in December he returned to 
Eversley with his family, and remained till the end of January, when 
he and his eldest daughter sailed for New York, taking with him a 
few lectures, to meet his expenses. 

This Poem, written, but not corrected for the press, is the only 
one he composed this year : 

JUVENTUS MUNDI. 

List a tale a fairy sent us 

Fresh from dear Mundi Juventus. 

When Love and all the world was young, 

And birds conversed as well as sung ; 

And men still faced this fair creation 

With humor, heart, imagination. 

Who come hither from Morocco 

Every spring on the Sirocco ? 

In russet she, and he in yellow, 

Singing ever clear and mellow, 

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet you, sweet you. 

Did he beat you ? Did he beat you ? 

Phyllopneustes wise folk call them, 

But don't know what did befal them, 

Why they ever thought of coming 

All that way to hear gnats humming, 

* This sermon, with others, form the volume of " Westminster Sermons," 
which appeared in 1874, published by Messrs. Macmillan. 



Jjiventus Mundi. 45; 

Why they build not nests but houses, 
Like the bumble-bees and mousies. 
Nor how little birds got wings, 
Nor what 'tis the small cock sings — 

How should they know — stupid fogies ? 

They daren't even believe in bogies. 

Once they were a giid and boy, 

Each the other's life and joy. 

He a Daphnis, she a Chloe, 

Only they were brown, not snowy, 

Till an Arab found them playing 

Far beyond the Atlas straying. 

Tied the helpless things together. 

Drove them in the burning weather. 

In his slave-gang many a league, 

Till they dropped from wild fatigue. 

Up he caught his whip of hide, 

Lashed each soft brown back and side 

Till their little brains were burst 

With sharp pain, and heat, and thirst. 

Over her the poor boy lay. 

Tried to keep the blows away, 

Till they stiffened into clay. 

And the ruffian rode away : 

Swooping o'er the tainted ground, 

Carrion vultures gathered round. 

And the gaunt hyenas ran 

Tracking up the caravan. 

But — Ah, wonder ! that was gone 

Which they meant to feast upon. 

And, for each, a yellow wren. 

One a cock, and one a hen. 

Sweetly warbling, flitted forth 

O'er the desert toward the north. 

But a shade of bygone sorrow. 

Like a dream upon the morrow. 

Round his tiny brainlet clinging, 

Sets the wee cock ever singing 

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet you, sweet you, 

Did he beat you ? Did he beat you ? 

Vultures croaked, and hopped and flopped, 

But their evening meal was stopped. 

And the gaunt hyenas foul, 

Sat down on their tails to howl. 

Northward towards the cool spring weather, 

Those two wrens fled on together. 



454 Charles Kingsley, 

On to England o'er the sea, 
Where all folks alike are free. 
There they built a cabin, wattled 
Like the huts where first they prattled. 
Hatched and fed, as safe as may be, 
Many a tiny feathered baby. 
But in autumn south they go 
Pass the Straits, and Atlas' snow, 
Over desert, over mountain, 
To the palms beside the fountain, 
Where, when once they lived before, he 
Told her first the old, old story. 
What do the doves say ? Curuck-Coo, 
You love me and I. love you. 

EvERSLEY, January 7, 1874. 

". . . . We sail on the 29th," he vi^rites to Professor New- 
ton ; ''we go in April or May (when the prairie is in flower) to 
San Francisco, and then back to Denver and the Rocky Moun- 
tains south of Denver, and then straight home. 

" Tell us if we can do anything for you. ... I think you 
have ordered a pair of Asahta sheep-horns already, we will do our 
best, . . . and have friends who will do their best for you 
after we are gone." 

The notes of the journey are made by his daughter, and form the 
connecting thread between his own letters home : 

"We arrived at Sandy Hook late on the loth Feb., and on the 
morning of the nth landed at New York ; and here, before my 
father set foot on American soil, he had a foretaste of the cordial 
welcome and generous hospitality which he experienced everywhere, 
without a single exception, throughout the six months he spent in 
the United States and Canada. The moment the ship warped into 
her dock a deputation from a literary club came on board, took 
possession of us and our baggage, and the custom-house authorities 
passed all our trunks without looking at them. We went out later 
in the day to stay at Staten Island with Mr. F. G. Shaw, where we 
stayed till the 14th, going to New York on that day for a dinner 
and reception given in my father's honor by the Lotus Club." 

Staten Island, February 12. 

" I have, thank God, nothing to write but what is pleasant and 
hopeful. We got here yesterday afternoon, and I am now writing 



Arrival in the United States. 455 

in a blazing, sunny, south window, in a luxurious little room, in a 
luxurious house, redolent of good tobacco and sweet walnut-wood 
smoke, looking out on a snow-covered lawn, and trees, which 
like the people, are all English, with a difference. I have met 
with none but pleasant, clever people as yet, afloat or ashore, and 
Mr. Curtis (Mr. Shaw's son-in-law, and an old friend of Thack- 
eray's,) a very handsome, cultivated man. 

"As for health, this air, as poor Thackeray said of it, is like 
champagne. Sea-air and mountain air combined, days already 
an hour longer than in England, and a blazing hot sun and blue 
sky. It is a glorious country, and I don't wonder at the people 
being proud of it. 

To-day R. and I go into New York by steamer to see various 
people and do business ; and out again before dinner, to meet a 
very gentleman-like clergyman of this place, once rector of San 
Francisco. I enclose a log and chart of the voyage which should 
interest and teach Grenville, for whom it is intended. 1 dine 
with the Lotus Club on Saturday night, and then start for Boston 
with R. to stay with Fields next week." 

" On Monday evening, after a busy day in Boston, we went out 
to Salem, fifteen miles by train, and my father was particularly 
struck and interested by the recurrence of the old Fen names, with 
which he was familiar from his early childhood, on that side of the 
Atlantic, and made me notice, with tears in his eyes, the difference 
between the New World and Old World Lynn, etc., etc. Through 
the whole of his stay in America the recurrence of the Old World 
names of places and people were a never-failing source of interest 
and pleasure to him, 

" On the i8th we went out to Cambridge, and spent the next 
few days there with some friends, my father going in and out to 
Boston, and spending one night at Andover and another at George- 
town. At Georgetown, the lady with whom he was to stay being 
ill, he went to the village inn, and told me that the great question 
of hard money v. paper had been quaintly brought to his notice by 
the landlord's little child of six or seven, who sat on his knee play- 
ing with his watch chain, and finding among his seals an old Span- 
ish gold doubloon, cried, ' See, father, the gentleman has got a 
cent on his chain ! ' never having seen a gold coin before. He 
took the greatest interest in the Agassiz Museum at Cambridge, 
his only regret being that he had come to America two months too 
late to make the acquaintance of its founder. The joyous young 



456 Charles Kingsley. 

life of the university with which he was surrounded, together with 
the many distinguished Americans with whom he made or renewed 
acquaintance, made these days exceedingly pleasant to my father, 
and it was with real regret that he left Cambridge on the 25th. 

" We broke our journey at Springfield, staying there one night 
as the guests of Mr. Samuel Bowles, of the celebrated Springfield 
Republican newspaper, and reached New York again, to stay with 
our kind friends Professor and Mrs. Botta." 

Dr. Wharton's, Cambridge, Mass., February 19, 1874. 

"• Here is a little haven of rest, where we arrived last night. 
LongfeJ'ow came to dinner, and we dine with him to-night. Yester- 
day, in Boston, dear old Whittier called on me and we had a most 
loving and like-minded talk about the other world. He is an old 
saint. This morning I have spent chiefly with Asa Gray and his 
plants, so that we are in good company. 

" New York was a great rattle, dining, and speechifying, and 
being received, and so has Boston been ; and the courtesy, and 
generosity, and compliments would really turn any one's head who 
was not as disgusted with himself, as I always (thank God,) am. 
The Westminster lecture is the only one I have given as yet. 
Salem was very interesting, being next to Plymouth, the Pilgrim 
Fathers' town. People most intelligent, gentle, and animated. 
They gave me a reception supper, with speeches after, and want us 
to come again in the summer to their Field Naturalists' Club. New 
England is, in winter at least, the saddest country, all brown grass, 
ice-polished rocks, sticking up through the copses, ced.lr scrub, low, 
swampy shores ; an iron land which only iron people could have 
settled in. The people must have been heroes to make what they 
have of it. Now, under deep snow, it is dreadful. But the sum- 
mer, they say, is semi-tropic, and that has kept them alive. And, 
indeed already, though it is hard frost under foot, the sun is bright, 
and hot, and high, for we are in the latitude of Naples ! I cannot 
tell you a thousandth part of all I've seen, or of all the kindness 
we have received, but this I can say, that R. is well, and that I 
feel better than I have felt for years ; but Mr, Longfellow and 
others warn me not to let this over-stimulating climate tempt me 
to over-work. One feels ready to do anything, and then suddenly 
very tired. But I am at rest now. ..." 

New York, March i, 1874. 

" . . . . We made great friends with Asa Gray and are 
going to stay with him when we return. Moreover, dear Colonel 
John Hay, with his beautiful wife, has been here, and many more, 
and here, as at Boston, we have been seeing all the best people. 



In Washington. 457 

Mr. Winthrop was most agreeable, a friend of the Cranvvorths, 
Bunburys, Charles Howard, and all the Whig set in England, and 
such a fine old gentleman. Nothing can exceed the courtesy and 
hospitality everywhere. . . . On Thursday we are ofif to Phila- 
delphia, then vVashington, where we have introductions to the 
President, etc., and then back here to these kind fiiends. From 
Professor Botta I am learning a lot of Italian history and politics, 
which is most useful. 

" Here the streets are full of melting snow. We had a huge 
snow-storm on Wednesday after dreadful cold, and overhead a sky 
like Italy or south of France, and a sun who takes care to remind 
us that we are in the latitude of Rome. But it is infinitely healthy, 
at least to me. R. looks quite blooming, and I am suddenly quite 
well. ... I never want medicine or tonic, and very little 
stimulant. But one cannot do as much here as at home. All say 
so and I find it. One can go faster for awhile but gets exhausted 
sooner. As for the people they are quite charming, ahd 1 long to 
see the New Englanders again when the humming bifds and mock- 
ing birds get there and the country is less like Gi'eenland. . , , 
I have been assisting Bishop Potter at an ordination. The old 
man was very cordial, especially when he found I was of the re- 
spectful and orthodox class. So that is well, but I will not i)reach, 
at least not yet." 

" During our stay among our many friends in New York, renew- 
ing old friendships and making fresh acquaintances, my father ])ar- 
ticularly rejoiced at an opportunity of meeting Mr. William CuUea 
Bryant, " wkose poetry had been his delight from his boyhood. 
From New York we went to Philadelphia, staying there for two 
nights with Mr. C. J. Peterson. On the evening of our arrival my 
father lectured in the Opera House to an audience of nearly 4,000 
— every seat being occupied, and the aisles and steps crowded with 
people, who stood the whole time. Here, as in New York and 
Boston, we were overwhelmed with kindness, our hosts and other 
friends gathering together at their houses everyone in the city 
whose acquaintance was most likely to give us pleasure. 

" On the 7th of March we went on to Washington, where Presi- 
dent Grant welcomed my father most cordially. The loth we 
spent among the scientific men of Washington, Dr. Henry at the 
Smithsonian Institute, and Professor Hayden at the office of the 
Geological Survey of the Territories. In the latter my father took 
a keen interest, and was struck by the admirable work displayed in 
the geological maps and photographs made by the surveying parties 



45 S Charles Kingsley. 

in the field in Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming daring the 
summer months, which are worked up at Washington during the 
winter. 

" We also went to the Senate House though rather weary with 
continual sightseeing : but my father often said afterwards that he 
would not have missed that visit for any consideration, for in the 
Senate he was introduced to Mr. Charles Sumner. They had cor- 
responded a good deal in former years, though personally unac- 
quainted, and for some time the correspondence had ceased owing 
to the different views they had held on some American matters. 
But the moment tlie two came face to face all mistrust vanished, as 
each instinctively recognized the manly honesty of the other, and 
they had a long and friendly talk. An hour after, Mr. Sumner was 
seized with an attack of Angina Pectoris, from which he had long 
suffered, and when we reached New York the next day we were 
shocked to find that the news of his death had preceded us by 
telegraph." 

Washington, Mai'ch 8. 

" . . . . We are received with open arms, and heaped with 
hospitality. I hardly like to talk of it, and of our reception by 
Mr. Childs and all Philadelphia. We went just now and left our 
introductions at the White House^ and in walked dear Rothery, 
who is here settling the International Fisheries question, and he is 
going to take me round to make all our calls, on Fish, and 
Dr. Henry, &c., and then to dine, and go with him to the White 
House in the evening, and go to P)altimore on Tuesday. . . . 

" Railway travelling is very cheap and most luxurious. Mean- 
while we are promised free passes on the Chicago lines and also to 
CaHfornia. 1 have not been so well for years. My digestion is 
])erfect, and I am in high spirits. But 1 am homesick at times, 
and would give a finger to be one hour with you, and G., and M. 
But I dream of you all every night, and my dreams are more 
pleasant now 1 sleep with my window open to counteract the 
hideous heat of these hot-air pipes. R. is very well and is the best 
of secretaries. Tell G. I was delighted with his letter. 

" On Monday the 9th, I was asked by the Speaker of the House 
of Representatives to open the Session of the House with prayer,* 
and I simply repeated two collects from the Englisli Prayer-book, 
mentioning, as is the custom, the President of tne United States, 

* This was considered a most unusual distinction, and the deep solemnity of 
manner and simplicity with which it was done struck every one present. 



In New England. 459 

the Senate, and the House of Representatives, and ended with the 
Lord's Prayer." 

" From New York my father went up the Hudson to Pough- 
keepsie and Troy, joining me at Hartford (Conn.) on the 14th, to 
pay a long-promised visit to Mr. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). 
From Troy to Hartford he came through the wooded passes of 
Berkshire County, and was enthusiastic about the beauty of the 
pine forests, and rocky trout streams, just breaking free from the 
winter snow which was beginning to melt, comparing it to the best 
parts of the Eifel and Black Forest. 

"On Monday the i6th, we returned to Boston to stay with my 
father's old friend Mr. James T. Field, in whose hospitable house 
we were able to see many whose acquaintance we had long wished 
to make, and whose friendship was a lasting pleasure to my father. 
During this week my father spent one night at New Haven, stay- 
ing with his namesake and distant kinsman, Dr. William Kingsley, 
of Yale College." 

Boston, March 23. 

". . . . We are housed and feasted everywhere. I do not tire 
the least. — Sleep at night, and rise in the morning as fresh as 
a lark, to eat a great breakfast, my digestion always in perfect 
order, while my nerve is like a bull's. This is a marvellous cli- 
mate. The Americans make themselves ill by hot-air, and.foul air. 
and want of exercise ; I, who sleep with my window open and get 
all fresh air I can by day, am always well. To-morrow morning we 
start for Montreal, and then on to Quebec to good Col. Strange. 

" Sumner's death has been an awful blow here. I do not won- 
der, for he was a magnificent man. He and 1 were introduced to 
each other in the Senate an hour before his attack. He was most 
cordial, and we had much talk about Gladstone, and the A.'s. 
His last words to me were, that he was going to write to the 
Duchess of Argyle the next day. Alas ! I wrote to her for him, to 
tell her particulars of the end. 

" Oh, dear, I wish spring would come, the winter here is awful. 
The grass as brown with frost as a table. But the blue-bird and 
the robin (as they call a great particolored thrush,) are just begin- 
ning to come, to my intense delight. However, when we go north 
tomorrow we shall run into Arctic weather again. Don't frighten 
yourself at our railroads, they seem utterly safe, and I believe one 
is far safer, humanly speaking, here than at home. As for the 
people, they are fine, generous, kindly, wholesome folk, all classes 
of them. Now good-bye, and love to M., and my blessing to 
G. . . ." 



460 Charles Kingsley. 

Washington, Ap}il g. 

" Here we are safe and sound, having run 500 miles in thirty 
hours to Baltimore, from the delightful Dufferins. . . . The 
long journeys do not in the least tire me, so have no fears for me. 
The safety of these rails is wonderful, as is their comfort. We have 
come out of intense winter into damp spring. The birds (such beau- 
ties) are coming fast from the Bahamas and Floridas ; the maples 
are in crimson clouds of little flowers ; the flowers are coming out 
in the gardens. I have seen two wasps like West India ones, an 
inch and a half long, and heard a tree toad, and am warm once 
more. All goes well. We have a dinner-party to-night ; we are 
staying with Senator Potter, and to-morrow a dinner-party with the 
President. So we shall have seen quasi-royalty, British and Ameri- 
can both in one week. , . . Thank God for our English letters. I 
cannot but hope that there is a time of rest and refreshing for us 
after I return. . . . To me the absence of labor and anxiety is 
most healthy. I am quite idle now for days together, and the rail 
itself is most pleasant idleness." 

"At Baltimore my father yielded to the entreaties of the friends 
with whom we were staying, and preached on the 12th in the princi- 
pal church of Baltimore to a large congregation. On Easter day he 
had preached in the little church close to Rideau, for the first time 
since he landed in America, on ' The Peace of God.' On the 20th 
of April, we left New York to begin working our way slowly west- 
ward, so as to be at Omaha early in May to meet a large party of 
friends who had invited us to join them in a trip to California. 
Our first halting place was Ithaca (Cornell University), which we 
should have reached on the evening of the 20th, but on the Erie 
railroad we were stopped for six hours by a huge rock falling on the 
track as a coal train was coming towards us, round sharp curves, 
and we should have had a frightful accident but for the presence of 
mind of the engineer, as his engine ran over the rock, jamming itself 
and the tender across both lines of rail ; he being unhurt, and remem- 
bering our train was due at that moment, ran down the line seeing us 
coming, and we pulled up within 100 yards of the disaster. It hap- 
pened in the midst of the finest scenery on the Delaware, above Port 
Jervis, where the railway follows the windings of the river, and is in 
many places blasted out of the cliffs. And as there was no possi- 
bility of getting on till the disabled train and broken trucks were 
removed, my father and I spent the hours of waiting in wandering 
about the rocky woods above the railway, botanizing and geologizing. 



At Niagara. 461 

" On Tuesday we reached Ithaca, and went on the next day to 
Niagara. After one night at Niagara we went on the 23rd (St. 
George's day) forty miles to Hamilton (Ontario), where my father 
had an enthusiastic reception at his lecture. After lecturing he 

went to the dinner of the St. George's Society We 

returned next day to Niagara, staying at Clark's Hill with an old 
English friend, with whom we spent the next three days, my father 
preaching on Sunday, the 26th, in the morning, at Clifton, and in the 
afternoon at Chippewa. He thoroughly enjoyed being once more 
in the country, and the walks on country roads, after three months 
of cities and pavements. The spring birds were just beginning to 
make their appearance, and the spring flowers to try and push their 
leaves through the melting snow. On the 27th we went on to 
Toronto for one night, and on the 28th we finally bade farewell to 
Canada, and set our faces westward, reaching Detroit (Mich.) late 
that night. 

"At Detroit, where we stayed three days with the rector of one 
of the Episcopal churches, the weather was still bitter, and my father 
could not shake off a cold which he had caught at Niagara. But as we 
neared St. Louis, on the afternoon of the 2nd of May, after a railway 
journey of twenty hours, we began to be warm once more, and 
realize what spring time in the West really was. All the fruit trees 
were in blossom ; the ground on either side of the railway, where 
any was left unfilled, was carpeted with beautiful flowers utterly 
unknown to us, and the air was mild and balmy." 

Niagara, April 21, 

" At last we are here, safe and well, thank God, in the most 
glorious air, filled with the soft tl*imder of this lovely phantom, for 
such, and not stupendous, it seems as yet to me. I know it could 
and would destroy me pitilessly, like other lovely phantoms, but I 
do not feel awed by it. After all, it is not a quarter of the size of 
an average thunderstorm, and the continuous roar, and steady 
flow, makes it less terrible than either a thunderstorm or a real 
Atlantic surf. But I long for you to sit with me, and simply look 
on in silence whole days at the exquisite beauty of form and 
color. . . 



" After a delightful time in the Prince's old quarters at Hamilton, 
we are here again in another old quarter of his, the loveliest house 
in the loveliest grounds, and as I write the whole rapids of Niagara 



462 Charles Kings ley. 

roaring past 100 yards off, between the h^ige arbor vitcC, forty feet 
high, Hke a tremendous grey Atlantic surf lushing down-hill instead 
of up. I could not describe the beauty of this place in a week. I 
can see the smoke of the horse-shoe through a vista on my left, not 
half a mile off as I sit (sketch enclosed). We are above, under- 
stand, and the river is running from right to left. To-day we are 
going to Des Veaux College to see the lower rapids." 

St. Louis, May 4. | 

" At St. Louis safe and well, thank God, in the capital of the 
West, and across the huge rushing muddy ditch, the Mississippi. 
Having come here over vast prairies, mostly tilled, hundreds of 
miles like the Norfolk fens, without the ditches, a fat, dreary, aguish, 
brutalizing land, but with a fine strong people in it, and here is a 
city of 470,000 souls growing rapidly. It is all very wonderful, and 
like a dream. But there is material civilization and comfort every- 
where (except at the stations where the food is bad), and all goes 
well. Only I wish already that our heads were homeward, and 
that we had done the great tour, and had it not to do. However, 
we shall go west in comfort. The Cyrus Fields, the Grays, and 
probably the dear Rotherys, will make up a good party. And I 
cannot but feel that I have gained much if only in the vast experi- 
ence of new people and new facts. I shall come home 1 hope a 
wider-hearted and wider-headed man ; and have time, I trust, to read 
and think as I have not done for many years. At least so runs my 
dream. We had a glorious thunderstorm last night after I had 
helped at the communion in the morning, and preached in the 
afternoon for good Mr. Schuyler ~ 

"We start to-morrow for California, after receiving here every 
civiUty. The heat is tremendous, all of a sudden, but it will be 
cooler as we rise the prairies out of the Mississippi Valley. We 
have free passes here to Kansas City, and the directors offered to 
take us on with them to Denves. We shall also have free passes 
to California and back from Omaha — a great gain." 

"We stayed for a week in St. Louis, where the hot weather 
came on so suddenly and fiercely that we were both made quite ill 
by it, and were thankful on Saturday, the 9th of May, to leave the 
city on our way to Omaha, where we were to join our friends from 
New York. 

" The journey was intensely hot. A perfect sirocco blowing 
away everything in the cars if the windows were opened ; but the 
country was so lovely as almost to make amends for our discomfort. 
The trees were bursting into a tender green ; the woods were here 



At Salt Lake City. 463 

snowy with the pure white dogwood and wild plum blossoms, there, 
purple pink with the Judas tree, and down below grew countless 
wild flowers, making us long every moment that it were possible to 
stop the train and gather them. 

" We reached Omaha on Sunday morning, the loth, and had 
hardly been there an hour before we felt the renovatmg effect of 
the glorious air rushing dovvn, down, in a gale 500 miles from the 
Rocky Mountains, to cool and refresh the panting Missouri Valley ; 
and we were able once more to eat and sleep, which in the heat of 
the last three days at St. Louis had become impossible." 

Omaha, May ii. 

" And we are at Omaha ! a city of 20,000, five years old, made 
by the railway, and opposite to us is Council Bluffs ! ! Thirty 
years ago the palavering ground of trappers and Indians (now all 
gone), and to that very spot, which I had known of from a boy, 
and all about it, I meant to go in despair .... as soon as 
I took my degree, and throw myself into the wild life, to sink or 
swim, escaping from a civilization which only tempted nie and 
maddened me with the envy of a poor man ! Oh ! how good God 
has been to me. Oh ! how when I saw those Bluffs yesterday 
morning I thanked God for you — for everything, and stared at 
them till I cried " 

" On the 14th the party of friends we were awaiting arrived at 
Omaha, and on the following day we left with them for the first 
stage of the Californian journey. Mr. Cyrus Field and Mr. J. A. 
C. Gray, of New York, were the organizers of the expedition, and 
with them, besides several of their own relations and friends, were 
Mr. and Mrs. H. C. Rothery, making a party of eleven Americans 
and five English, which quite filled, but did not crowd, the magnifi- 
cent Pullman car which was our home for the next fortnight. 

" Our first halt was at Salt Lake City, where we arrived on 
Friday, the 15th May, one day too late, unfortunately, for my 
father to take part in the consecration of St. Mark's, the first 
Episcopal church which has been built in Utah. On Sunday, the 
17th, however, he preached the evening sermon at the church, to 
such a crowded congregation that there was not standing room in 
the little building, and numbers had to go away. The steps out- 
side, and even the pavement, being crowded with listeners, among 
whom were many Mormons as well as ' Gentiles.' Brigham Young 



464 Charles Kingsley. 

sent to offer my father the tabernacle to lecture or preach in, but 
of this offer he of course took no notice whatever, a course strongly 
approved by the excellent Bishop, IJr. Tuttle. 

" On Monday, the i8th, we left Salt Lake City, after a visit to 
General Moreau at Camp Douglas, the United States camp, on the 
hill-side above the city, who had one of the Gatling guns fired for 
our amusement. On our remonstrating against such a waste of 
ammunition he said that 'he was glad sometimes to show those ras- 
cals in the city how straight his guns fired, and that if they gave 
him any trouble he could blow the city to pieces in an hour.' " 

Walker House, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 17. 

"Here we are after such a journey of luxury — through a thou- 
sand miles of desert, plain, and mountain, treeless, waterless 
almost, sage brush and alkali. Then canons and gorges, the last 
just like Llanberris Pass, into this enormous green plain, with its 
great salt lake ; and such a mountain ring, 300 to 400 miles in cir- 
cumference ! The loveliest scene I ever saw. As I sit, the snow- 
peaks of the Wasatch tower above the opposite houses five miles 
off, while the heat is utterly tropical in the streets. Yesterday we 
Avere running through great snowdrifts, at from 5,000 to 7,000 feet 
above the sea (we are 5,000 here) and all along by our side the old 
trail, where every mile is fat with Mormon bones. Sadness and 
astonishment overpower me at it all. The ' city ' is thriving 
enough, putting one in mind, with its swift streams in all streets, 
and mountain background, of Tarbes, or some other Pyrenean 
town. But, ah ! what horrors this place has seen. Thank God it 
is all breaking up fast. The tyrant is 70, and must soon go to his 
account, and what an awful one. I am deeply interested in the 
good bishop here, and his mission among the poor little children, 
whose parents are principally Cornish, Worcestershire, and South 
Welsh ; and if I can do aught for him when I come hojne, I will 
do it with a will.- Meanwhile our kind hosts insist on R. and me 
being their guests right through, and let us pay for nothing. It is 
jan enormous help, for they control both railways and telegraphs, 
and do and go exactly as they like. The gentlemen and R. are 
gone down to-day to see a silver mine, by special engine, and she 
and Rothery (F.L.S.) are going to botanize. The flowers are ex- 
quisite, yellow ribes over all the cliffs, &c., and make one long to 
jump off the train every five minutes. While the geology makes 
me stand aghast ; geologizing in England is child's play to this. 
R. is quite well, and the life of everything, and I am all right, but 
den't like a dry air at 95°, with a sirocco. 

"Interrupted by a most interesting and painful talk with a man 
who has been United States Governor here. It is all very dread 



Off for the Yosemite. 465 

ful. Thank God we (in England) at least know what love and 
purity is. I preach to-morrow evening, and the Bishop of Colorado 
in the morning." 

" On the 20th our car was slipped during the night at Reno, and 
when we woke at 5 a.m., we found ourselves on a branch line at 
Carson City. After breakfast, with Californian strawberries heaped 
on dishes on every table, we left our car for a special train, the 
Pullman being too long for the sharp curves of the railroad, and 
with Mr. D. O. Mills, of San Francisco, who had joined our train in 
his directors' car, the day before, at Ogden, we went up to Virginia 
city, and spent the day among silver mines and stamp mills, and 
dust, and drought, my dear father finding, even in the out of the 
way spot, a warm and hearty welcome from many. We returned 
to Carson in the afternoon, and were picked up in the night b}'^ the 
Western train at Reno, breakfasting at Summit, on the top of the 
Sierra Nevada next morning, and arrived at Sacramento at midday 
on the 2 1 St. 

" My father was delighted at finding himself once more in almost 
tropical heat, and spent all the afternoon driving with our friends 
about the city, and revelling in the gorgeous subtropical flowers 
which hung over every garden fence. In the evening he lectured 
to a very pleasant audience, and that night we left Sacramento in 
our car, with a special engine, for Merced, which we reached 
before dawn. 

" Next morning, the 22nd, we were all up about four, and before 
starting on our Yosemite trip, Mr. Cyrus Field sent off a telegram 
to the Dean of Westminster, to my mother, and various friends in 
England : — ' We are, with Canon Kingsley and his daughter and 
other friends, just entering Yosemite Valley, all in excellent health 
and spirits. Mr. Kingsley is to preach for us in Yosemite on 
Sunday.' 

"We started at 6 a.m., in two open stages with five horses, and 
drove 54 miles that day through exquisite country, botanizing all the 
way to Skeltons, a ranch in the forest, and some of our party made 
their first acquaintance with a real western shanty. On the 23rd we 
were all up betimes, my father, the earliest of all, came up with his 
hands full of new and beautiful flowers, after a chat with the guides, 
who had driven the mules and ponies in from their grazing ground, 
and were begmning to saddle them for our day's ride. At 6 we 
30 



466 Charles Kingsley, 

started, and my father said he felt a boy again, and thoroughly 
enjoyed the long day in the saddle, which many of our friends found 
so tiring. We chose a new and unfrequented route, and havnig to 
climb two mountains and ride along precipices, and ford four rivers 
in flood in 29 miles, we were not sorry to reach the Valley at sun- 
set. But rough as the ride was, it surpassed in beauty anything we 
had ever seen before, as we followed the windings of the Merced 
river between pine-clad mountains, still white with snow on their 
highest points, till we reached the mouth of the Valley itself, and, 
emerging from a thicket of dogwood, pines, and azaleas, ' El 
Capitan,' just tipped with the rosy setting sun on one side, and the 
Bridal Veil Fall rushing in a white torrent, 900 feet high, over the 
gloomy rocks, on the other side, revealed themselves to us in aglow 
of golden rosy light. 

"The next day (Whit Sunday) most of our party rested from 
their fatigues, and we walked about and feasted our eyes on the 
almost overpowering scene around us, which seemed, if possible, to 
increase in beauty in every fresh phase of light or shade, sunlight 
or moonlight. At 5 p.m. the visitors of both hotels assembled in 
the little parlor at Black's, and my father gave a short service, after 
which we sang the looth Psalm, and he preached a short sermon 
on verses 10-14, J:6-i8 of the 104th Psalm, which happily was the 
Psalm for the day.* 

* In his sermon, in Westminster Abbey, on Whit-Sunday, the Dean of West- 
minster referred to Mr. Field's telegram. His text, too, was on Psalm civ., 2, 
14, 15. 24: " On this very day, " he says, " (so I learnt yesterday by that elec- 
tric flash which unites the old and new worlds together), a gifted member of this 
Collegiate Church, whose discourses on this and like Psalms have rivetted the 
attention of vast congregations in this Abbey, and who is able to combine the 
religious and scientific aspects of Nature better than any man living, is on this 
very day, and perhaps at this very hour, preaching in the most beautiful spot on 
the face of the earth, where the glories of Nature are revealed on the most gigan- 
tic scale — in that wonderful Californian Valley, to whose trees, the cedars of Leba- 
non are but as the hyssop that groweth out of the wall — where water and forest 
and sky conjoin to make up, if anywhere on this globe, an earthly paradise. Let 
me, from this pulpit, faintly echo the enthusiasm which I doubt not inspires his 
burning words. Let us feel that in this splendid Psalm and this splendid festival, 
the old and the new, the east and the west, are indeed united in one." 

"On May 26th Mrs. Kingsley received the following telegraphic message from 
Mr. Cyrus Field, through the Secretary of the Anglo-American Telegraph Com- 
pany : " Yosemite Valley, California, Sunday, May 24th. — We arrived here 



Mariposa Grove. 467 

" On Monday we spent the day in riding all over the Valley, 
and on Tuesday, 26th, we left it at 6 a.m., and rode 24 miles to 
Clark's Ranch, near the Mariposa Grove. It was bitterly cold, 
for the snow had not melted on some of the high passes, which 
were 7,000 feet above the sea; but we found blazing fires and a 
good supper at Clark's, and after a good night rode out six miles 
the next day to the Mariposa Grove of Sequoias (WeUingtonias). 
My father and I agreed to see the first one together, and riding on 
ahead of our party a little, we suddenly came upon the first, a huge 
cinnamon-red stem standing up pillar-like, with its head of delicate 
green foliage among the black sugar pines and Douglas spruce, 
and I shall never forget the emotion with which he gazed silently 
— and as he said 'awe struck ' — on this glorious work of God. 

" It was very cold, and we rode over snow for some two miles 
under the 'big trees,' and were glad to camp in Mr. Clark's litttle 
empty shanty under a group of some of the largest of the sequoias. 
Mr, Clark, who is the guardian of the Grove, had come with us as 
well as our own guide, Jim Cathy, and they soon lighted a roaring 
fire, and seated on a bed of fragrant hemlock twigs, we warmed 
ourselves and ate our luncheon of bread and meat and excellent 
beer, and then rode on and back to the Ranch, with a collection 
.of flowers that took our whole evening to dry. Next day, the 
28th, we drove down to Merced, 65 miles, and there joined the 
railroad again, and left on the 29th at dawn, arriving that afternoon 
in San Francisco." 

San Francisco, May 31. 

" Here we are safe after such adventures and such wonders in 
the Yosemite and the Big Trees, and found the dear English let- 
ters waiting for us Tell G. 1 will write to him all about 

the sea lions which I saw this morning. All is more beautiful and 
wonderful than I expected, and California the finest country in the 
world — and oh ! the flowers." 

yune g. 

" The next letter you get from me will, I hope, be from Denver. 
We start east to-morrow, thank God, and run the Sierras, and the 
desert back again, and beautiful as Cahfornia is, I think destined 



safely Saturday evening, all delighted with the magnificent scenery. Canon 
Kingsley preached in the Valley this Sunday afternoon. We leave here Tuesday 
for the Big Trees. Arrive in San Francisco, Friday. Remain there till the 
following Wednesday." 



468 Charles Kings ley. 

to be the finest country in the world, I want to be nearer and 
nearer home. We have been so heaped with kindness that this 
trip will cost us almost nothing. 1 have got cones fi-om the big 
trees, with seeds in them, for Lord Eversley and Sir Charles Bun- 
bury ; and we have collected heaps of most exquisite plants. 1 
think we shall bring home many pretty and curious things." 

" We stayed in San Francisco about ten days, my father makmg 
excursions to different places in the neighborhood. The most 
notable of these was to the Berkeley University at Oakland, 
whither he was invited by the president, Mr. D. C. Oilman. This 
day he most thoroughly enjoyed ; and he made an address to the 
students full of vigor and enthusiasm, on Culture, a subject always 
very near to his heart. 

"During the last few days of my father's stay in San Francisco, 
he caught a severe cold from the damp sea fog which makes the 
city and parts of the coast of California extremely unhealthy, while 
a few miles inland the climate is the finest in the world. This 
cold became rapidly worse, and the doctors in San Francisco or- 
dared him to leave the city as quickly as possible ; so on Wednes- 
day, June 10, we set off eastward once more, with Mr. J. A. C. 
Gray, and part of our original party ; and after a very trying 
journey of four days, we reached Denver. Here most providen- 
tially my father met his brother, Dr. Kingsley, who found that he 
was suffering from a severe attack of pleurisy, and advised our 
going south on the next day, 75 miles, to Colorado Springs, by the 
narrow gauge railway, which my brother had helped to build four 
years before. Here Dr. and Mrs. W. A. Bell received us, and 
nursed my father with the most devoted attention in their charm- 
ing English house, at the foot of Pike's Peak. 

" As soon as my father had recovered sufficiently to be moved, 
we all drove up twenty-two miles to Bergun's Park for change of 
, air, and stayed at Mr. Cholmondely Thornton's Ranch, for a week. 
My father's chief amusement during these weeks of illness was 
botany, and though he was not able to get many specimens himself, 
he took a keen delight in naming those we brought him in every 
day. 

" On Sunday, the 5th July, he had recovered enough to be able 
to read a short service in the large dining-room of the Ranch, and 
he often reverted to that service with pleasure and emotion. 



In Colorado. 469 

" On the 6th we went down again to Manitou, and spent a few 
days with General and Mrs. Pahner, at Glen Eyrie, whose care 
and kindness helped on his recovery ; and on the following Sunday, 
July 12, my father preached in the Episcopal Church at Colorado 
Springs, which was barely finished, and in which only one service 
had been held. The church was crowded, many men, young Eng- 
lishmen chiefly, having ridden in twenty miles and more from dis- 
tant Ranches to hear my father preach. The next week, before 
leaving Colorado Springs for the homeward journey, he gave a 
lecture in Colorado Springs for the benefit of the church, where he 
also had a crowd to listen to him. The place was very dear to 
him from the fact of my brother having been one of the first 
pioneei's there." 

Manitou, Colorado, June i8. 
" We are here in perfect peace, at last, after the running and 
raging of the last three weeks, and safe back over those horrid 
deserts, in a lovely glen, with red rocks, running and tinkling burn, 
whispering cotton woods, and all that is delicious, with Pike's Peak 
and his snow seemingly in the back garden, but 8,000 feet over our 
heads. Oh, it is a delicious place, and the more so, because we 
have just got a telegram from Maurice, to say he and his wife are 
safe in New York from Mexico. Thank God ! The heat is tre- 
mendous, but not unwholesome. God's goodness since I have been 
out, no tongue can tell. . . . Please God I shall get safe and 
well home, and never leave you again, but settle down into the 
quietest old theologian, serving God, I hope, and doing nothing 
else, in humility and peace." 

yiine 29. 
" A delightful party has clustered here, not only the Rotherys, 
but Dudley Fortescue and Lord Ebrington, who has just got his 
Trinity scholarship, and is a charming lad ; and we all go up to 
Bell's Ranch in Bergun's Park to-morrow, for a few days, to get 
cool^ for the heat here is tropic, and we cannot move by day. That 
has given me rest though, and a time for reading. God has been 
so gracious that I cannot think that He means to send my grej 
hairs down in sorrow to the grave, but will, perhaps, give me time 
to reconsider myself, and sit quietly with you, preaching and work- 
ing, and writing no more. Oh ! how I pray for that. Tell the 
Dean 1 have been thinking much of him as I read Arnold's life and 
letters. Ah, happy and noble man ; happy life, and happy death. 
But 1 must live, please God, a little longer, for all your sakes. 
Love to G. and M." 



470 Charles Kings ley. 

Bergun' s Park, July 2. 
" Oh, my Love, Your birthday-letter was such a comfort to me, 
for 1 am very home-sick, and counting the days till I can get back 
to you. Ah, few and evil would have been the days of my pilgrim- 
age had 1 not met you; and now 1 do look forward to something 
like a peaceful old age with you. . . Tell John Martineau his 
letter was a great comfort to me. This place is like an ugly High- 
land strath, bordered with pine woods. Air almost too fine to 
breathe, 7,200 feet high. Pike's Peak 7,000 feet more at one end, 
fifteen miles off ; and, alas ! a great forest-fire burning for three days 
between us and it \ and at the other end wonderful ragged jjeaks, 
ten to twenty miles oft". Flowers most lovely and wonderful. 
Plenty of the dear common hare-bell, and several Scotch and Eng- 
lish plants, mixed with the strangest forms. We are (or rather 
Rose is) making a splendid collection. She and the local botanist 
got more than fifty new sorts one morning. Her strength and ac- 
tivity and happiness are wonderful ; and M.'s letters make me very 
ha:ppy. Yes ; I have nuich to thank God for, and will try and 
show my thankfulness by deeds. Love to G. Tell him there are 
lots of trout here ; but it is too hot to catch them." 

Glen Eyrie, Jtdy 11. 

" Thank God our time draws nigh. I preach at Colorado Springs 
to-morrow, and lecture for the Church on Wednesday ; * Denver, 

* Canon Kingsley and a Beetle. — (From a Denver letter.) — I will 
relate a little anecdote of Canon Kingsley, which I heard at Colorado Springs, 
the other day. On a recent evening he read his lecture on " Westminster 
Abbey " to the people of Colorado Springs, right under the shadow of Pike's 
Peak. In the midst of his lecture a bug of some species of Coleoptera, new and 
strange to the eminent lecturer, ahghted on his manuscript and attracted his 
attention at once. Mr. Bug sat still a moment or two, during which space the 
speaker "improved the occasion" to study his peculiarities of form and struct- 
ure — perhaps determining in his mind certain obscure or doubtful questions ; but 
while these investigations were in progress, and his language rolling right along 
to the delight of his hearers, the insect began to expand his wings as if anxious 
to fly away. The reverend speaker saw the motion, and deftly caught it in his 
hand. Going right on with his line of argument, he continued his examination 
for several moments, until, having settled everything to his own satisfaction, he 
let it buzz away about its own business — perhaps mentally repeating the parting 
injunction of " My Uncle Toby" to the fly. To any ordinary man the presence 
of such an intruder would have been unwelcome, and he would have been brushed 
aside, but the great English divine, trained to such close habits of observation 
and thought, could not forego the opportunity, even in the midst of his lecture, 
to study the points in a new species of beetle, his mental discipline enabling him 
to carry along in his mind two trains of ideas at the same time. 



Lorraine, a Ballad. 471 

Friday, and then right away to New York, and embark on the 25th. 
Letters from M., who has gone to Tennessee. . , . 

" This is a wonderful spot : such crags, pillars, caves — red and 
grey — a perfect thing in a stage scene ; and the P'lora, such a 
jumble — cactus, yucca, poison sumach, and lovely strange flowers, 
mixed with Douglas's and Menzies' pine, and eatable pinon, and 
those again with our own harebells and roses, and all sorts of 
English flowers. Tell G. I have seen no rattlesnakes ; but they 
killed twenty-five here a year or two ago, and little Nat. M., twelve . 
years old, killed five. Tell him that there are ' painted lady 
butterflies, and white admirals here, just like our English, and a 
locust, which, when he opens his wings, is exactly like a white 
admiral butterfly ! and with them enormous tropic butterflies, all 
colors, and as big as bats. We are trying to get a horned toad to 
bring home alive. There is a cave opposite my window which 
must have been full of bears once, and a real eagle's nest close by, 
full of real young eagles. It is as big as a cart-load of bavins. 
Tell G. that I will write again before we start over the plains. Oh ! 
happy day ! " 

Glen Eyrie, July 14. 

" I cannot believe that I shall see you within twenty-one days , 
and never longed so for home. I count the hours till I can cross 
the Great Valley, on this side of which God has been so good to 
me. But, oh ! for the first rise of the eastern hills, to make me sure 
that the Mississippi is not still between me and beloved Eversley. 
I am so glad you like Westminster. Yes ! we shall rest our weaiy 
bones there for a while before kind death comes, and, perhaps, see 
our grandchildren round us there.* , Ah ! please God that I \ 
look forward to a blessed quiet autumn, if God so will, having had 
a change of scene, which will last me my whole life, and has taught 

me many things The collection of plants grows 

magniticent " 

During his severe illness in Colorado, he composed these lines ; 
they were the last he ever wrote : 



" * Are you ready for your steeple-chase, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree? 

Barum, Barum, Barum, Baruni, Barum, Barum, Baree. 
You're booked to ride your capping race to day at Coulterlee, 
You're booked to ride Vindictive, for all the world to see, 
To keep him straight, and keep him first, and win the run for me. 

Barum, Barum, &c.' 

* His first grandchild passed away at its birth just before he himself went into 
the unseen world, and happily he never knew it. 



472 Charles Kingsley. 

2. 

" She clasped her new-born baby, poor Lorraine, Lorrame, Lorree, 

Barum, Barum, &c. * 
' I cannot ride Vindictive, as any man might see, 
And I will not ride Vindictive, with this baby on my knee ; 
He's killed a boy, he's killed a man, and why must he kill me ? ' 

3- 
'" Unless you ride Vindictive, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree, 
Unless you ride Vindictive to-day at Coulterlee, 
And land him safe across the brook, and win the blank for me. 
It's you may keep your baby, for you'll get no keep from me.' 

4- 
" ' That husbands could be cruel,' said Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree, 
* That husbands could be cruel, I have known for seasons three ; 
But oh ! to ride Vindictive while a baby cries for me. 
And be killed across a fence at last for all the world to see ! " 

5- 

" She mastered young Vindictive — Oh ! the gallant lass was she. 
And kept him straight and won the race as near as near could be ; 
But he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow tree, 
Oh ! he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see. 
And no one but the baby cried for poor Loi-raine, Lorree." 

The American chapter may be fitly closed by the following letter 
from Mr. John Whittier, whose poetry and whose acquaintance, 
made in Boston, had given him such especial pleasure. 

Bearcamp House, W., N. H., 8th Mo. 30, 1876. 
"Dear Friend, 

" I am glad to learn from a letter received from an American 
clergyman just, returned from England that thou art engaged in 
preparing a biography of thy lamented husband. It seems to me 
very fitting that the life of such a man as Charles Kingsley should 
be written by one so fully acquainted with the noble and generous 

* The meaning of this strange refrain is not known. Some were doubtful 
whether, as no explanation was given by Mr. Kingsley, it would not be better to 
omit it ; but Mr. Froude, who thought this poem one of the finest of his ballads, on 
being consulted, wrote : "I am in favor of keeping the refrain. The music of 
the song will be incomplete without it : and as the words went humming 
through his head, the refrain went along with them. It presses like an inex- 
orable destiny, and makes you feel the iron force with which poor Lorraine was 
swept to her fate." .... 



Letter from Whittier. 473 

personal qualities of the reformer, poet, and theologian. In this 
country his memory is cherished by thousands, who, after long ad- 
miring the genius of the successful author, have learned, in his 
brief visit, to love him as a man. 

" I shall never forget my first meeting with him in Boston. I 
began, naturally enough, to speak of his literary work, when he 
somewhat abruptly turned the conversation upon the great themes 
of life and duty. The solemn questions of a future life, and the 
final destiny of the race, seemed pressing upon him, not so much 
for an answer (for he had solved them all by simple faith in the 
Divine Goodness), as for the sympathetic response of one whose 
views he believed to be, in a gi^eat degree, coincident with his own. 
' I sometimes doubt and distrust myself,' he said, ' but I see some 
hope for everybody else. To me the Gospel of Christ seems in- 
deed Good Tidings of great joy to all people ; and I think we may 
safely trust tlie mercy which endureth_/(?r eve7\^ It impressed me 
strongly to find the world-known author ignoring his literary fame, 
unobservant of the strange city whose streets he was treading for 
the first time, and engaged only with ' thoughts that wander through 
eternity.' All I saw of him left upon me the feeling that I was in 
contact with a profoundly earnest and reverent spirit. His heart 
seemed overcharged with interest in the welfare, physical, moral, 
and spiritual, of his race. I was conscious in his presence of the 
bracing atmosphere of a noble nature. He seemed to me one of 
the manliest of men. 

" I forbear to speak of the high estimate which, in common with 
all English-speaking people, I place upon his literary life-woi'k. 
My copy of his ' Hypatia ' is worn by frequent perusal, and the 
echoes of his rare and beautiful lyrics never die out of my memory. 
But since I have seen hivi^ the man seems greater than the author. 
With profound respect and sympathy, 

" I am truly thy friend, 

"John G. Whittier." 

To Airs. Kings ley. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

1874-5- 
Aged 55. 

Return from America — Work at Eversley — Illness at Westminster — New Anxiety 
— Last Sermons in the Abbey — Leaves the Cloisters for Ever — Last Return 
to Eversley — The Valley of the Shadow of Death — Last Illness and Depart- 
ure — The Victory of Life over Death and Time.- 

It was sultry August weather when he returned to Eversley from 
America ; there was much sickness and a great mortality in the 
parish, and he was out among his people twice and three times 
a day in the burning sun and dry easterly wind. His curate, the 
Rev. Elis Price, was away for his well-earned holiday ; and 
his great joy at being with his poor people again made him 
plunge too eagerly and suddenly into work, and Sunday services, 
before he had regained his strength after his illness in Colorado. 
When he went up to Westminster in September, a severe attack 
of congestion of the liver came on, which alarmed his friends, and 
prevented his preaching in the Abbey on the first Sunday of his 
residence. This attack shook him terribly, and from that time he 
was unable to preach more than once a day during his residence ; 
but, though altered and emaciated, he seemed recovering strength, 
when, early in October, a shadow came over his home, in the 
dangerous illness of his wife, touching him in his tenderest point, 
and filling him with fears for the future. When all immediate dan- 
ger was over, it was with difficulty he was persuaded to leave her 
and take a few days' change of air and scene, before his Novem- 
ber work commenced, at Lord John Thynne's, in Bedfordshire, 
and with his friend Mr. Fuller JVlaitland, in Essex.* From these 
visits, however, he returned invigorated in health and spirits, and 
got through his sermons in the Abbey with less difficulty. The 
congregations were enormous — the sermons powerful as ever, 

* At Staustead, during this visit, the friend with whom he was conversing on 
tlie deepest doctrines of Christianity said she could never forget his look and 
voice, as he folded his arms, and bowing his head, said, " I cannot — cannot live 
without the Man Christ Jesus." 



The last Sermon. 475 

though their preparation was an increasing labor. The change in 
his appearance was observed by many. " I went back," said an 
old correspondent, who had gone to hear him preach in West- 
minster Abbey, " sad at the remembrance of the bent back and 
shrunken figure, and while hoping the weakness was but temjio- 
rary, I grieved to see one who had carried himself so nobly, broken 
down by illness. 

His sermon on All Saints' Day will never be forgotten by those 
who heard it. It was like a note of preparation for the life of 
eternal blessedness in the vision of God upon which he was so 
soon to enter. It was a revealing too of his own deepest belief 
as to what that blessedness meant, with back glances into the 
darker passages and bitter struggles of his own earthly life and 
warfare with evil. 

On Advent Sunday, November 29, he preached his last sermon 
in the Abbey, with intense fervor. It was the winding up of his 
work in the Abbey, but neither he nor those who hung upon his 
words thought that it was the winding-up of his public ministrations 
and the last time he would enter the pulpit. The text was Luke 
xix. 41, Christ weeping over Jerusalem. A great stoi'm was raging 
over London that afternoon, and the gale seemed almost to shake 
the Abbey, which made the service to one who was keenly sensi- 
tive, as he was, to all changes of weather, especially those which 
would affect the fate of ships at sea, most exciting. 

The sermon was a characteristic one. " Advent," he said, 
" should be a season not merely of warning, awe, repentance, but 
a season of trust and hope and content." He sketched the lead- 
ing features of his past teaching in the Abbey — dwelling on the 
Kingship and Divine Government of Christ over races, nations, in- 
dividuals — His infinite rigor and yet infinite tenderness of pity — 
the divine humanity which possessed Him as he wept over the 
doomed city, and cried out, " How often would I have gathered 
thee as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings," and closed 
with these words : 

"And what is true "of nations and of institutions — is it not true 
of individuals, of each separate human brother of the Son of Man ? 

" Ah — and is there a young life ruined by its own folly — a young 
heart broken by its own wilfulness — an elder man or woman too, 
who is fast losing the finer instincts, the nobler aims, of youth in 
the restlessness of covetousness, of fashion, of ambition ? Is there 



476 Charles Kingsley. 

one such poor soul over whom Christ does not grieve ? To whom, 
at some supreme crisis of their lives, He does not whisper — ' Ah, 
beautiful organism — thou, too, art a thought of God — thou, too, if 
thou wert but in harmony with thyself and God, a microcosmic 
City of God ! Ah ! that thou hadst known — even thou — at least in 
this thy day — the things which belong to thy peace ? ' 

" Shall I go on ? shall I add to the words of doom ? ' But now 
they are hid from thine eyes ? Thou hast gambled with thine own 
destiny too long. Thou hast fixed thy habits. Thou hast formed 
thy character. It is too late to mend. Thou art left henceforth 
to the perpetual unrest which thou hast chosen — to thine own lusts 
and passions ; and the angels of peace depart from thy doomed 
heart, as they did in the old legend, from the doomed Temple of 
Jerusalem — sighing — ' Let us go hence ' — shall I say that ? God 
forbid — it is not for me to finish the sentence — or to pronounce the 
doom of any soul. 

" But it is for me to- say — as I say now to each of you — Oh that 
you each may know the time of your visitation — and may listen to 
the voice of Christ, whenever and however He may whisper to you, 
' Come unto Me, thou weary and heavy-laden heart, and I will give 
thee Rest.' 

" He may come to you in many ways. In ways in which the 
world would never recognize Him — in which perhaps neither you 
nor I shall recognize Him ; but it will be enough, I hope, if we 
but hear His message, and obey His gracious inspiration, let Him 
speak through whatever means He will. 

" He may come to us, by some crisis in our life, either for sorrow 
or for bliss. He may come to us by a great failure ; by a great 
disappointment — to teach the wilful and ambitious soul, that not in 
that direction Hes the path of peace. He may come in some un- 
expected happiness to teach that same soul that He is able and 
willing to give abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think. 
He may come to us, when our thoughts are cleaving to the ground, 
and ready to grow earthy of the earth — through noble poetry, noble 
music, noble art — through aught which awakens once more in us 
the instinct of the true, the beautiful, and the good. He may come 
to us when our souls are restless and weary, through the repose of 
Nature — the repose of the lonely snow-peak, and of the sleeping 
forest, of the clouds of sunset and of the summer sea, and whisper 
Peace. Or He may come, as He may come this very night to 
many a gallant soul — not in the repose of Nature, but in her rage 
— in howling storm, and blinding foam, and ruthless rocks, and 
whelming surge—and whisper to them even so — as the sea swallows 
all of them which it can take — of calm beyond, which this world 
cannot give and cannot take away. 

''He may come to us when we are fierce and prejudiced, with 
that still small voice — so sweet and yet so keen. ' Understand 



Last Illness. 477 

those who misunderstand thee. Be fair to those who are unfair to 
thee. Be just and merciful to those whom thou wouklst hke to 
hate. Forgive and thou shalt be forgiven ; for with what measure 
thou measurest unto others, it shall be measured to thee again.' 
He comes to us surely, when we are selfish and luxurious, in every 
sufferer who needs our help, and says, ' If you do good to one of 
these, my brethren, you do it unto Me.' 

" But most surely does Christ come to us, and often most hap- 
pily, and most clearly does he speak to us — in the face of a little 
child, fresh out of heaven. Ah, let us take heed that we despise 
not one of these little ones, lest we despise our Lord Himself 
For as often as we enter into communion with little children, so 
often does Christ come to us. So often, as in Judea of old, does 
He take a little child and set him in the midst of us, that from its 
simplicity, docility, and trust — the restless, the mutinous, and the 
ambitious may learn the things which belong to their peace — so 
often does He say to us, ' Except ye be changed and become as 
this little child, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of 
Heaven. Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me. For I am 
meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.' 

" And therefore let us say, in utter faith, ' Come as Thou 

SEEST BEST BuT IN WHATSOEVER WAY ThOU COM EST EVEN SO 

COME, Lord Jesus.' " 

As soon as the Abbey service was over, he came home much 
exhausted, and went straight up to his wife's room. "And now 
my work here is done, thank God ! and .... I finished 
with your favorite text." 

The next day he dined at the Deanery to meet Di\ Caiid, before 
attending his lecture in the Abbey at the special evening service. 
The night was damp, and coming out into the cold cloister he 
caught a fresh cold, and coughed all through the night ; but he 
made light of it, for he could think of nothing but the joy of return- 
ing with his wife to Eversley for Christmas and the quiet winter's 
work. And on the 3rd of December, full of spirits and thankful- 
ness, he left the cloisters forever, and took her with tenderest care 
to Eversley. But his happiness was shortlived ; the journey down 
had had serious consequences for her, and that night the Angel of 
Death for the first time for thirty-one years seemed hovering over 
the little rectory. He had been engaged by the Queen's connnand 
to go to Windsor Castle the following Saturday for two days. 
Telegrams were sent there, and to his children who were absent. 
Still he could not believe there was danger, till he was told 



478 Charles Kingsley. 

that there was no hope, and then — " My own death-warrant was 
signed," he said, "with those words." Children and friends col- 
lected round him, while he gathered himself up with a noble self- 
repression to give comfort where it was needed. His ministrations 
in the sick room showed the intensity of his own faith, as he 
strengthened the weak, encouraged the fearful, and in the light of 
the Cross of Christ and the love of God, spoke of an eternal 
reunion and the indestructibility of that married love which, if 
genuine on earth, can only be severed for a brief moment. When 
asked if he thought it cowardly for a poor soul, who had been 
encompassed with such protecting love as his, to tremble on the 
brink of the dark river which all must cross alone — to shrink from 
leaving husband, children — the love that had made life blessed and 
real and full for so many years — and to go alone into the unknown : 
"Cowardly!" he said. "Don't you think I would rather some 
one put a pistol to my head than lie on that bed there waiting? 
But, — " he added, "it is not darkness you are going to, for God is 
light. It is not lonely, for Christ is with you. It is not an un- 
known countr)'^, for Christ is there." And when the dreary interval 
before reunion was mentioned, he spoke of the possibility of all 
consciousness of time being so abolished that what would be long 
years to the survivor might be only a moment to the separated soul 
that had passed over the River of Death. And so, with words of 
strong consolation and hope, with daily prayer and reading from the 
Gospel and Epistles of St. John and the Psalms, he preached 
peace and forgiveness till all was calm ; and dwelling on the border- 
land together tor weeks of deep communion, every chapter of the 
past was gone over once more, and " life was all re-touched again," 
— favorite poetry was read for the last time, Wordsworth's "Ode 
to Immortality," Milton's magnificent Ode to "Time," again and 
again, Matthew Arnold's "Buried Life," and certain passages from 
Shakspeare. Once more he himself administered the Holy Com- 
munion to his wife, children, and servants ; and once again, before 
he himself lay down to die, he received it with them from the hands 
of Mr. Harrison. But though his own iron will and utter submis- 
sion to the Will of God enabled him to be outwardly calm in the 
sick room, and even to speak there of the lonely years which he 
feared were before him, of the grave where, he said, he would allow 
no one but himself to do the last office, where he would place the 



The Valley of the Shadow of Death. 479 

three Latin words in which the Ufe of his life, past, present, and 
future, are gathered up, — the charm of Hfe for him was over, and 
he spoke the truth when he said his "heart was broken," for so it 
was. He was ill himself, and became careless of his own health, 
reckless of cold and snow; his cough became bronchitic. On the 
28th of December he took to his bed, and pneumonia, with its 
terrible symptoms, came on rapidly. He had promised his wife to 
"fight for life" for his children's sake, and he did so for a time ; 
but the enemy, or, as he would have said himself, "kindly Death," 
was too strong for him, and in a few weeks the battle was over and 
he was at rest. The weather was bitter, and he had been warned 
that his recovery depended on the same temperature being kept 
up in his room, and on his never leaving it ; but one day he leapt 
out of bed, came into his wife's room for a few moments, and tak- 
ing her hand in his, said, "This is heaven, don't speak ; " but, after 
a short silence, a severe fit of coughing came on, he could say no 
more, and they never met again. When told that another move 
would be fatal, he replied, " We have said all to each other, we 
have made up our accounts ; " and often repeated, " It is all right, 
all as it should beT For a few days a correspondence was kejDt up 
in pencil ; and on December 30 he wrote of this " terrible trial," 
the fiery trial of separation, to both so bitter at such a moment. 
" But," he adds, " I am somewhat past fretting — almost past feel- 
ing I know it must be right, because it is so strange 

and painful." Again, on New Year's Eve, " I am much better in 
all ways. Thank God for the gleam of sun and the frost on the 

window-pane " And again, in the last letter he ever 

wrote, on January 3rd, a bright morning, the first Sunday in the 
year : " Ah ! what a good omen for the coming year — this lovely 
Sunday morning. May it mean light and peace and blessing in 
both worlds for us all ! , . . ." But, to use his own words, it 
then became " too painful, too tantalising," and the letters ceased. 
He was now kept constantly under the influence of opiates to 
quiet the cough and keep off haemorrhage, and his dreams were 
always of his travels in the West Indies, the Rocky Mountains, and 
California. These scenes he would describe night after night to the 
trained nurse from Westminster Hospital who sat up with him, and 
whose unwearied care and skill can never be forgotten. He would 
tell her. too, of the travels of his eldest son in America, of whom 



480 Charles Kingsley. 

he continually spoke with love and pride, and to whose success in 
life he so eagerly looked. His own physical experiences were 
very singular to him, for he sat as a spectator outside himself, and 
said if he recovered he would write a book about them. Early in 
January, when the alarming symptoms came on, his devoted medi- 
cal attendant, Mr. Heynes, of Eversley, who was day and night at 
the Rectory, begged for further advice ; and Dr. Hawkesley, who 
twice came dovvn from London, did not despair of Mr Kingsley ; 
he said he never saw a " more splendid fight for life," and was 
struck with his brilliancy in describing his symptoms. 

He spoke but little latterly, and the fear of exciting him made 
those around afraid of telling him anything that would rouse him 
to the sense of his great loneliness. But one morning before his 
condition became hopeless, when some little letters, enclosing 
some drawings to amuse him, had come from the young Princes at 
Sandringham, who loved him well and were sorry for his illness 
and his grief, his doctor said they might be shown him. They 
touched him deeply; and his messages in answer were among the 
last he sent. On Sunday, the 17th, he sat up for a few moments, 
where he could see from the bedroom window which looked into 
the churchyard his dear people go into church, and spoke of their 
"goodness" to him and how he loved them. He reiterated the 
words, "It is all right." "All under rule." One morning early 
he asked the nurse, if it was light, to open the shutters, for he loved 
light. It was still dark. "Ah ! well," he said, " the light is good 
and the darkness is good — it is all good." From sleeping so much 
he was unconscious of the lapse of time. " How long have I been 
in bed ? " he said one day, and on being told three weeks, he said, 
" It does not seem three days. Ah, I live in fairyland, or I should 
go mad ! " 

On the 20th of January the Prince of Wales, whose regard and 
affection had never failed for fourteen years, requested Sir William 
Gull to go down to Eversley. He, too, thought recovery possible ; 
but immediately after his visit hcemorrhage returned — the end 
seemed near, and then the full truth — and not a painful one — burst 
upon him. " Heynes," he said, " I am hit ; this last shot has told 
— did F. tell you about the funeral ? We settled it all," and then 
he repeated, in the very words used to himself, the arrangements 
that had been made in view of the event he had been dreading, 



Rest at Last. 481 

which God mercifully spared him ; and after mentioning the names 
of the bearers selected (laboring men endeared by old parish 
memories), " Let there be no paraphernalia, no hatbands, no car- 
riages . . . ." He was calm and content. He had no need 
to put his mind into a fresh attitude, for his life had long been 
" hid with Christ in God." Twenty-tive years before, in speaking 
of a friend who did not accept Christianity, he had said, "The 
more I see of him, the more I learn to love the true doctrines of 
the Gospel, because I see more and more that only in faith and 
love to the Incarnate God, our Saviour, can the cleverest, as well 
as the simplest, find the Peace of God which passes understanding." 
In this faith he had lived — and as he had lived, so he died — ■ 
humble, confident, unbewildered. That night he was heard mur- 
muring, " No more fighting — no more fighting ; " and then followed 
intense, earnest prayers, which were his habit when alone, — too 
sacred for any listener. Yes, his warfare was accomplished, he 
had fought the good fight, and never grounded his arms till God 
took them mercifully out of his brave hands and gave him rest. 

It was on one of those, his last nights on earth, his daughter 
heard him exclaim, " How beautiful God is." For the last two 
days before he departed, he asked no questions, and sent no mes- 
sages to his wife, thinking all was over, and hoping that at last the 
dream of his life was fulfilled of their dying together; and under 
this impression, it is thought, when the faithful nurse who had been 
with his children since their birth, left his wife for a moment to 
come to her dying master the day before he went, "Ah," he said, 
" dear nurse, and I, too, am come to an end ; it is all right — all as 
it should be,'' and closed his eyes again. On that same morning 
from his bed he had looked out over the beloved glebe once more. 
The snow, which had been deep for weeks, had cleared a little, the 
grass of the pasture was green, and he said/ " Tell Grenville (his 
youngest son, who had just left him after helping to arrange his 
b>.J) I am looking at the most beautiful scene I ever saw," adding 
some words of love and approval, that were scarcely audible. 

The last morning, at five o'clock, just after his eldest daughter, 
who, with his medical man and Mr. Harrison, had sat up all night, 
had left him, and he thought himself alone, he was heard, in a 
clear voice, repeating the words of the Burial Service : 
31 



482 Charles Kings ley, 

" Thou knowest, O Lord, the secrets of our hearts ; shut not 
Thy merciful ears to our prayer, but spare us, O Lord most holy, 
O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, Thou most 
worthy Judge Eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, from any 
pains of death, to fall from Thee." 

He turned on his side after this, and never spoke again, and be- 
fore midday, on the 23rd of January — without sigh or struggle — 
breathed his last breath, so gently that his eldest daughter and the 
family nurse, who were watching him, could scarcely tell that all 
was over. Twenty years before, and how often since, he had 
expressed his longing for that moment : " God forgive me if I am 
wrong, but I look forward to it with an intense and reverent curi- 
osity." And now the great secret that he had longed to know was 
revealed to him, and he was satisfied. 

On the afternoon of his departure a telegram was sent to Ches- 
ter, where the daily bulletins had been watched for so eagerly, 
" Canon Kingsley peacefully expired ; " and on the Sunday morn- 
ing the tolhng of the Cathedral bell, and the omission of his name 
in the daily prayer for the sick, confirmed the worst fears of 
many loving hearts. For many weeks the prayers of the congrega- 
tion had been asked for " Charles and Fanny Kingsley." Not 
only in Chester Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, but in other 
churches and chapels, at prayer-meetings too, in London, Sheffield, 
and elsewhere, his fife was prayed for, and God in His great mercy, 
had answered by giving him immortal life. 

As soon as the news reached Westminster, a telegram from the 
Dean brought these words to his children : " Bear up under the 
blow. You will perhaps choose Eversley, but the Abbey is open 
to the Canon and the Poet." 

Deanery, Westminster, Jan. 24, 1875. 

" I cannot let the day pass without a word in addition to the 
brief telegram I sent last night. 

" It seems but a few years, though it is many, since I first saw 
your dear father at Oxford, and again still fewer, though that is also 
long ago, since I for the first time was at Eversley — and our meet- 
ings have been but few and far between— but I always felt that he 
was a faithful friend, and a brave champion for much and many 
that I loved ; and when he was transplanted among us, my dear 
wife and I both looked forward to the multiplication of these meet- 
ings — to long years of labor together. 



Honored in his Death. 483 

" God has ordered it otherwise. He had done his work. He had 
earned his rest. You had seen all that was highest and best in him. 

"The short stay amongst us here had given him a new Ufe, and 
had endeared him to a new world. He has gone in the fulness of his 
strength, like one of his own tropical suns — no twilight — no fading. 
Be of good heart, for you have much for which to be thankful. 

" I ventured to say something about the place of burial. It is 
far the most probable (from what I have heard that he had said) 
that Eversley will have been the place chosen by him and by you 
— most natural that it should be so. Had his days ended here, 
then I should have pressed that the right which we have acquired 
in him should have the chief claim, and you know that should the 
other not be paramount, here we should be too glad to lay him, 
not by that official right which I try to discourage, but by the natu- 
ral inheritance of genius and character. Any way, let me know 
the day and hour of the funeral. If none nearer or more suitable 
should be thought of, I, as the chief of his last earthly sphere, would 
ask to render the last honors. 

" Yours sincerely, 

"A. P. Stanley." 

There was no hesitation with those who knew his own feelings, 
and at Eversley he was buried on the 28th of January ; no one was 
invited to come, but early in the day the clmrchyard was full. 
There had been deep snow and bitter cold for many weeks. But 
the day was kindly, soft, and mild, with now and then gleams of 
sunshine. He was carried to the grave by villagers who had 
known, loved, and trusted him for years. The coffin, covered with 
flowers, was m^t at the garden-gate by the Bishop of Winchester, 
the Dean of Westminster, Mr. Powles, his oldest friend, his two 
last curates, Rev. William Harrison, and Rev. Elis Price, and his 
churchwarden Sir William Cope, and was laid before the altar, 
where for thirty-two years he had ministered so faithfully, before the 
service was finished at the grave. Roman Catholic and Protes- 
tant, Churchman and Dissenter, American and English, met at that 
grave ; every profession, every rank, every school of thought, was 
represented. Soldiers* and sailors were there ; among them three 
Victoria Cross Officers, men whom he had loved, and who honored 
him. The Master of Fox Hounds, with the huntsman and the 
whip, were there also, and from his beloved Chester came the Dean 

* Gen. Sir William Codrington ; Col. Sir Charles Russell, V.C. ; Col. Alfred 
Jones, V.C. ; Col. Evelyn Wood, V. C. ; Captain F. Maurice, &a 



484 Charles Kingsley. 

and a deputation from the Natural Science Society he had founded.* 
" I have been at many state funerals," said a naval officer who was 
present, " but never did I see such a sight as Charles Kingsley's." 

" Who," says Max Miiller, '' can forget that funeral on the 28th 
of January, 1875, and the large sad throng that gathered round his 
grave ? There was tlie representative of the Prince of Wales, and, 
close by, the gipsies of Eversley Common, who used to call him 
their ' Patrico-rai ' (their Priest King). There was the squire of 
his village, and the laborers young and old, to whom he had been 
a friend and a father. There were governors of distant colonies, f 
officers, and sailors, the bishop of his diocese, and the dean of his 
abbey ; there were the leading Nonconformists of the neighbor- 
hood, and his own devoted curates, peers and members of the 
House of Commons, authors and publishers, and the huntsmen in 
pink ; and, outside the churchyard, tlie horses and the hounds, for 
though as good a clergyman as any, Charles Kingsley had been a 
good sportsman, and had taken in his life many a fence as bravely 
as he took the last fence of all, without fear or trembling. All that 
he had loved and all that had loved him was there, and i&v^ eyes 
were dry when he was laid in his own gravel bed, the old trees, 
which he had planted and cared for, waving their branches to him 
for the last time, and the grey sunny sky looking down with calm 
pity on the deserted rectory, and on the short joys and the shorter 
sufferings of mortal man. 

" All went home feeling that life was poorer, and every one knew 
that he had lost a friend who had been, in some peculiar sense, his 
own. Charles Kingsley will be missed in England, in the English 
colonies, in America, where he spent his last happy year ; aye, 
whei-ever Saxon speech and Saxon thought is understood. He will 
be mourned for, yearned for, in every place in which he passed 
some days of his busy life. As to myself, I feel as if another cable 
had snapped that tied me to this hospitable shore." 

Such was the scene at Eversley, while at Chester and at West- 
minster the cathedral bell tolled for the well-beloved Canon, whom 

they should see no more. 

****** 
***** 

The Sunday following his funeral, sermons on his life and death 
were numerous. Dean Stanley in London, Dean Howson at 
Chester, Churchmen, Baptists, and other Nonconformists, both in 

* Dr. Stolterforth, Mr. Shepheard, Mr. Manning, Mr. Griffith. 

\ His Excellency Sir Arthur Gordon ; Col. Sir Thomas Gore Browne. 



A Memorial Fu7td. 485 

London, Chester, and elsewhere, while his own pulpit at Eversley 
Church was occupied by Sir WiUiam Cope in the morning, and by 
his devoted and attached curate, the Rev. Elis Price, in the afternoon. 

'Telegrams and letters, full of reverent love for him and of sym- 
pathy for those whom he had left, poured in from the highest to the 
lowest in this land, and from many in other lands, where his words 
had brought light in darkness, comfort in sorrow, hope in despair 
— from the heart of Africa, from Australia, from California, as well 
as from America, where thousands had loved him before they had 
seen him face to face so recently. 

Never had mourners over an unspeakable loss more exultant 
consolation, lifting them above their own selfish sorrow, to the 
thought of what they had possessed in him, and that, if misunder- 
stood by some in his lifetime, he was honored by all in his death — 
that among men of all parties, there was the unanimous feeling 
that the great presence which had passed away had left a blank 
which no one could exactly fill. 

A Kingsley Memorial Fund was set on foot immediately after 
the funeral, in London, Chester, and at Eversley. The call was 
responded to in America as well as in England. The church at 
Eversley has been enlarged and improved. The Chester memorials 
have been described by the Dean ; and on the 23rd of September 
the London memorial was placed in Westminster Abbey, of which 
the following account appeared in the Times of the next morning : 

The bust of Canon Kingsley, which has been executed in marble 
by Mr. Woolner, was unveiled yesterday afternoon in Westminster 
Abbey. The ceremony was extremely simple, but interesting and 
touching. At 2 o'clock Canon Duckworth, who succeeded the 
late Mr. Kingsley in his canonry, and is now in residence, attended 
by the Rev. W. Harrison (Mr. Kingsley's son-in-law) and the Rev. 
J. Troutbeck, Minor Canons, proceeded in surplices to the Bap- 
tistery, accompanied by the two sons and two daughters and 
daughter-in-law of the late Canon, and a small number of intimate 
friends. Canon Farrar was also present, but took no ofticial part. 

After the bust had been unveiled by Mr. Maurice Kingsley, 
Canon Duckworth delivered an address, at the close of which the 
ladies laid wreaths of choice flowers below the bust. 

The bust itself is one of Mr. Woolner' s finest works, and, to those 
who knew Charles Kingsley well, represents with marvellous 
fidelity the character which had so stamped itself upon his expres- 
sive features. The mingled sternness and tender sympathy, the 



486 Charles Kingsley. 

earnestness and i^layful humor are all in the living marble. To 
those who knew Mr. Kingsley but sHghtly, the likeness is at first 
less striking. The sculptor holding that either the beard or the 
smooth face may be legitimately treated in sculpture, but that the 
whisker is a temporary fashion of no artistic worth, has (since Mr, 
Kingsley wore no beard) entirely divested the face of hair, and 
this, while it increases the grandeur of the work, renders the like- 
ness less immediately apparent. But we believe that Mr. Kings- 
ley's own family, and all those who knew him well, are entirely 
satisfied that Mr. Woolner is not only right in his idea, but most 
thoroughly successful in his treatment. 

The Baptistery in which the bust is placed, is rapidly becoming, 
as the Dean has said, " a new Poets' Corner." On the same wall 
with the bust of Charles Kingsley stands that of Mr. Maurice, 
whom he delighted to call his "dear master ;" Keble and Words- 
worth find a place in the same chapel, and a stained window pre- 
sented to the Abbey by an American gentleman contains figures 
of George Herbert and Cowper. 

It was a matter of regret to all that Mrs. Kingsley' s extremely 
delicate health prevented her presence, but we may mention, that 
so*soon as the bust was completed and ready for the position 
it now occupies, Mr. Woolner sent it down to Byfleet for her in- 
spection. Those who know the danger of moving heavy works of 
art will appreciate the sculptor's kindness, which was, we know, 
deeply felt by Mrs. Kingsley. 

In Eversley Churchyard his wife has placed a white marble 
cross, on which, under a spray of his favorite passion-flower, are 
the words of his choice, the story of his life : 

"Amavimus, Amamus, Amabimus." 

And above them, circling round the Cross, " God is Love," the 
keynote of his faith. 

The green turf round the grave was soon worn by the tread of 
many footsteps 5 for months a day seldom passed without strangers 
being seen in the churchyard. On Bank holidays numbers would 
come to see his last resting-place — little children, who had loved 
the " Waterbabies," and the " Heroes," would kneel down rever- 
ently and look at the beautiful wreaths of flowers, which kind 
hands had placed there, wliile the gipsies never passed the gate 
without turning in to stand over the grave in silence, sometimes 
scattering wild flowers there, believing, as they do, to use their 



The " True and Perfect Knight'^ 487 

own strange words, that " he went to heaven on the prayers of the 
gipsies." 

* « * * * 

% :{: H> H< H: ^ 

And now these scattered memories, connected by a feeble 
thread all unworthy of its great subject, draw to a close. To some 
it may have seemed a treachery to lift the veil from the inner life 
of a man, who while here hated the notoriety which he could not 
escape, and shrunk from every approach to egotism ; but these 
private letters, showing, as they do, the steps by which he arrived 
at many of his most startling conclusions through years of troubled 
thought, are a commentary on much that seemed contradictory in 
his teaching, and may justify him, while they teach and strengthen 
others. Those alone who knew him intimately — and they not 
wholly — best understood his many-sided mind, and could interpret 
the apparent contradictions which puzzled others. Those who 
knew him little, but loved him much, could trust where they could 
not interpret. But to the public, some explanation, if not due, 
may yet be welcome ; and in that invisible state where perhaps he 
now watches with intensest interest the education of the human 
race, he would not shrink, as he would have shrunk here, from a 
publicity which, in revealing the workings of his own mind, may 
make his teaching of the truths which were most precious to him 
on earth more intelligible, if such a revelation should only help 
one poor struggling soul to light, and strength, and comfort, in the 
sore dark battle of life. 

Some, again, may be inclined to say that this character is drawn 
in too fair colors to be absolutely truthful. But " we speak that we 
do know, and testify to that we have seen." The outside world 
must judge him as an author, a preacher, a member of society ; but 
those only who lived with him in the i itimacy of everyday life at 
home can tell what he was as a man. Over the real romance of 
his life, and over the tenderest, loveliest passages in his private let- 
ters, a veil must be thrown ; but it will not be lifting it too far to 
say, that if in the highest, closest of earthly relationships, a love 
that never failed — pure, patient, passionate, for six-and-thirty years 
— a love which never stooped from its own lofty level to a hasty 
word, an impatient gesture, or a selfish act, in sickness or in health, 
in sunshine or in storm, by day or by night, could prove that the 



4-88 Charles Kingsley. 

age of chivalry has not passed away for ever, then Charles Kingsley 
fulfilled the ideal of a "most true and perfect knight" to the one 
woman blest with that love in time and to eternit^-. To eter- 
nity — for such love is eternal ; and he is not dead. He himself, 
the man, lover, husband, father, friend, he still lives in God, who is 
not the God of the dead, but of the living. 




CHARLES KINGSLEY'S GRAVE, EVERSLEY CHURCHYARD. 



APPENDIX. 



THE KINGSLEY MEMORIAL FUND. 

The Kingsley Memorial Fund, set on foot in February, 1875, resulted 
at Eversley in the enlargement of the Church, and in the carrying out 
of a plan of their late Rector for turning the old vestry in the tower into 
a baptistery, opening out the roof, and substituting open benches for 
the remaining pews. The Committee included the following names : — 

The Duke of Westminster. Rev. R. C. Powles. 

Lord Eversley. Rev. Elis Price. 

Lord Calthorpe. Mr. Martineau. 

Rt. Hon. W. Cowper Temple. Mr. Stapleton. 

General Sir William Codrington. Mr. Tindal. 

Sir William Cope. Mr. Dew. 

Mr. Beresford Hope, M. P. Mr. Wyeth. 

Mr. Raikes Currie. Mr. Seymour. 

On a Brass Plate in the Baptistery these words are inscribed : — 

IN PIAM MEMORIAM 

CAROLI KINGSLEY 

S. PETRI WESTMONASTERIENSIS 

CANONICI ^ 

HVIVSCE ECCLESIjE 

PER XXXI ANNOS 

RECTORIS DILECTISSIMI 

HANC ^DEM SACROSANCTAM 

QVAM DOCTRINA ILLVSTRAVIT SVA 

INSTAVRANDAM CVRAVERVNT 

PAROCHIANI ET AMICI 

DESIDERANTES 

A.D. 

MDCCCLXXV. 

At Chester, a Committee with which the Wrexham Society of Natu- 
ral Science joined, was formed, and it was decided that a Marble Bust 
should be placed in the Chapter House ; a Medal struck for successful 
students in the Natural Science Society ; and the ladies of Chester 
undertook to restore one of the Cathedral Stalls in memory of the 
Canon. 



490 Appendix. 

In London the following Prospectus was issued by Mr. John Thynne, 
and responded to most generously, both in England and America. 

KINGSLEY MEMORIAL FUND. 

WESTMINSTER. 

Independently of the proposed Restoration of Eversley Church, it is 
proposed that a Bust should be made of the Rev. Charles Kingsley, 
and that one copy be presented to the Chapter of Westminster, to be 
placed in the Abbey, and another to Cambridge, of which University 
Mr. Kingsley was so distinguished a member. 

Mr. Woolner, R. A., has expressed his willingness to undertake the 
execution of the bust. 

The following have already sent in their names in support of the 
Memorial : — 

The Archbishop of Dublin. Sir Arthur Helps, K.C.B. 

The Dean of Chester, Anthony Trollope, Esq. 

Alfred Tennyson, Esq. Thomas Hughes, Esq. 

Tom Taylor, Esq. The Dean of Windsor. 

The Master of Trinity College, John Martineau, Esq. 

Cambridge. Prescott Hewett, Esq. 

The Rev. H. Montagu Butler, G. W. Smalley, Esq., New York. 

D.D. The Rev. C. Powles. 

Professor Max Miiller. The Rt. Hon. Lord John Manners, 
A. Macmillan, Esq. M.P. 

The Bishop of Chester. Matthew Arnold, Esq. 

The Marquis of Lansdowne. Lord Houghton. 

The Hon. J. L. Motley. The Rev. S. Flood Jones. 

The Rev. Chancellor Benson, D.D. The Duke of Argyll, K.T. 

The Duke of St. Alban's. The Bishop of Winchester. 

John Walter, Esq., M.P. The Earl of Ellesmere. 

The Duke of Bedford. Sir Thomas Watson, Bart. 

The Marquis of Lome, K.T. Sir Charles Russell, Bart., M.P. 

The Right Hon.W.E. Forster,M.P. Lord Carlingford. 

The Right Hon. G. Hirdy, M.P. The Rev. Lord John Thynne. 

The Hon. C. L. Wood. Lord Henniker. 

Professor Tyndall. The Rev. Stopford Brooke. 

Lord Clinton. The Earl of Clarendon. 

Lord Penrhyn. The Rev. Canon Prothero. 

Treasurer : 

John C. Thynne, Esq. 

Little Cloisters, Westminster, Feb. 19, 1875. 

The list of Subscribers, which is too large to be inserted here, 
includes many names, dear to one who loved Art as he did : among 
them, George Macfarren, Alma Tadema, James Burn ; besides those 
of American friends who had welcomed him so warmly and so lately to 
their homes across the Atlantic. Mr. Charles Peterson, of Phila- 
delphia ; Mr. J. A. C. Gray, of New York ; Mr. G. W. Childs, of 
Philadelphia; Mr. D. O. Mills, of Cahfornia, &c., &c. 



Appendix. 491 

11. 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF 
THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY'S WORKS. 



1848 Saint's Tragedy. 

1849 Alton Locke. 
1849 Yeast. 

1849 Twenty-five Village Sermons. 

1852 Phaeton. 

1852 Sermons on National Subjects, ist Series. 

1853 Hypatia. 

1854 Sermons on National Subjects, 2nd Series. 

1854 Alexandria and her Schools. 

1855 Westward Ho ! 

1855 Sermons for the Times. 

1856 The Heroes. 

1857 Two Years Ago. 

1858 Andromeda and other Poems. 

1859 The Good News of God — Sermons. 
1859 Miscellanies. 

i860 Limits of Exact Science applied to History(InauguraI Lectures). 

1 861 Town and Country Sermons. 

1863 Sermons on the Pentateuch. 

1863 Waterbabies, 

1864 The Roman and the Teuton. 
1866 David and other Sermons. 

1866 Hereward the Wake. * 

1867 The Ancien Regime (Lectures at the Royal Institution). 
1867 Water of Life and other Sermons. 

1869 The Hermits. 

I869 Madam How and Lady Why. 

1871 At Last. 

1872 Town Geology. 

1872 Discipline and other Sermons. 

1873 Prose Idylls. 

1873 Plays and Puritans. 

1874 Health and Education. 

1874 Westminster Sermons, 

1875 Lectures delivered in America. 



INDEX. 



ABBOT, Archbishop, portrait of, by 
Vandyke, 59. 

Abergeldie, Castle of, 380, 381. 

Abou Zennab and his horse, story of, 214. 

" Advanced thinker " rebuked by Kings- 
ley, 280. 

Agassiz Museum, 455. 

Aldershot, camp at, 233 ; lecture to 
troops in camp at, 279 ; lecture on 
study of history at, 354, 411. 

Alston, Capt. A. H. , friendship between 
Kingsley and, 239. 

''Alton Locke, Autobiography of a Cock- 
ney Poet," origin of, iii ; finished, 
127 ; published by Chapman & Hall, 
128; published, 132 ; Carlyle on, 132; 
how received, 136. 

America, Kingsley sails for, with daugh- 
ter, 452. 

American Lectureship at Cambridge, 
address on by Kingsley, 364 ; offer 
to establish rejected, 366. 

American States, Kingsley proposes to 
lecture on history of, 319. 

Andover, 455. 

Animals, love of, 263. 

Archaeological Society of Chester, Kings- 
ley presides at, 413. 

Argyle, Duke of, book by, 377. 

Aristocrat, Kingsley repels charge that 
he is, 109. 

Arnold, Matthew, " Culture and Anar- 
chy," 420. 

Arnold's Life and Letters, 469. 

Art of Learning (the), lecture by Kings- 
ley on, 330. 

" At Last," 406. 

Articles (the), force of subscription to, 

358, 359- 
Athanasian Creed, 325, 354 ; asked to 

join committee in defence of, 438. 
Atheist editor, correspondence with, 288. 
Attacks on Kingsley's teachings by 

press, 386. 
"Autobiography of a Cockney Poet," 

III. 
Avignon, 352. 



BALTIMORE, Kingsley preaches in, 
460. 

Baptism, infant, F. D. Maurice on, 84. 

Baptists, F. D. Maurice on, 83. 

Barnack, living of, presented to Charles 
Kingsley, Sr., for son Herbert, 24; 
living surrendered, 28. 

Bateson, Master of St. John's College, 
recollections by, 52. 

Bates, H., letter to, 339. 

Bath and Wells, Lord Arthur Harvey, 
Bishop of, 311. 

Beatific Vision, sermon on, 452. 

Beetle, incident connected with, 470. 

Bell, Dr., and Mrs. W. A., 468. 

Bennett, Sir William Sterndale, 320. 

Bennett, Charles Henry, consults Kings- 
ley about illustrating " Pilgrim's 
Progress," 289. 

Benson, Dr., memories of Kingsley by, 
328. 

Berkeley University, at Oakland, visited, 
468. 

Betting, letter to young men of Chester 
on, 426 ; letter on, to son, 431. 

Bewick's works, 369. 

Biarritz, 348, 353. 

Bible politics, 135. 

Birmingham, lectures on Human Physi- 
ology, 436. 

Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, 405. 

Blandford, Kingsley curate of, 69. 

Bloomfield, Dr., Bishop of London, for- 
bids Kingsley to preach in London, 
147; prohibition withdrawn, 147. 

Bloomfield, Canon of Chester, letter 
from, 442, 443. 

Body and .Soul, 235. 

Boston, 455, 459. 

Botta, Prof, and Mrs. , 456, 457. 

Bovill, Chief Justice, death of, 432. 

Bowles, Samuel, 456. 

Boys, teaching of, Kingsley's views on, 
226. 

Bramshill Park Camp, 432. 

" Brave Words to Brave Soldiers," by 
Kingsley, 215. 

Bremer, Frederika, 135 ; visits Evers- 



494 



Index, 



ley Rectory, 170 ; letter to Kings- 
ley, 171. 

Bright, Mynors, letter from, 42. 

Brimley, George, letters to, 136, 276. 

Bristol riots, 31, 159. 

British Association meets at Cambridge, 
321 ; meeting of, at St. Andrews, 379. 

British Museum, paper on, by " Parson 
Lot," 102. 

Bronte, Miss, Life and Works of, 269. 

Brooke, Rajah, Sir James, letter from 
on " Westward Ho ! " 221. 

Brotherhoods and societies, letter from 
Kingsleyon, 211. 

Brother's love illustrated by story of 
Dover coachmen, 60. 

Brown, Rev. Baldwin, on keeping Crys- 
tal Palace open on Sundays, 171. 

Bryant, W. C, 457. 

Bullar, John, letters from Kingsley to, 
237, 267, 268, 275. 

Bunbury, Sir Charles Fox, letter from 
Kingsleyon rain sermon, 309; Kings- 
. ley's friendship with, 311 ; memories 
of Kingsley, 312 ; proposes Kings- 
ley as Fellow of Geological Society, 
326 ; letter from Kingsley to, on ap- 
pointment to Westminster, 449, 

Bunsen, Chevalier, 62 ; on " Hypatia," 
178, 180 ; letter from, to Kingsley 
about preface to " Deutsche Theolo- 
gie," 208. 

Bunsen, Henry de, paper by, on " How 
can the State best help in the Edu- 
cation of the Working Classes," 
403 ; recollections of Kingsley, 403. 

Button Cap at Barnack, 24. 



CALVINISM, ruinous influence of, 
237- 

Cambridge, incident of examination 
at, 53 ; inaugural lectures at, by 
Kingsley, 311, 455. 

Campbell, Rev. E. Pitcairn, letter from, 
44 ; letter to, on Royal Wedding, 
327 ; on toads in a hole, 341. 

Canterbury, Archbishop of, congratu- 
lates Kingsley on appointment to 
Westminster, 443. 

Carcassonne, 350. 

Carlyle's works, effects of, on Kingsley, 
49 ; writings, bright views of life, 
given by, 75, 118 ; recommends 
"Alton Locke" to Chapman and 
Hall, 128; opinion of "Alton 
Locke," 132 ; Kingsley not follower 
of in theology, 269 ; views on Church 
of England, 320. 

Carnarvon, Lord, 287. 

Catholics, justice to, 285. 

Character Album, as filled out by 
Kingsley, 439. 

Chartist outbieak, 94 ; Kingsley preach- 
es on, 97 ; sketch of, by Thomas 



Hughes, 98 ; Kingsley attends 

Chartist meeting, 117. 
" Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," by Parson 

Lot, 129 ; preface to, by Thomas 

Hughes, 97. 
Chester, Kingsley takes up residence at, 

411 ; botanical class at, 423 ; Lyell 

made member of Natural Science 

Society, 424. 
Chevallier Mons, 117. 
Childs, G. W., 458. A 

Cholera in England, 120 ; three sermons 

preached on, 120. 
Christ weeping over Jerusalem, subject 

of sermon in Westminster Abbey, 

475- 
Chris'tian Socialist, 135 ; attacked in 

Edinburgh and Quarterly, 137 ; 

stopped, 164. 
Chronological list of Kingsley 's works, 

491. 
Church of Rome, letter from Kingsley 

to young man going over to, 114. 
Civil Service Volunteers, Kingsley made 

chaplain of, 308. 
Clemens, Samuel (Mark Twain), 459. 
Colenso on Pentateuch, 343. 
Coleridge, Derwent, Kingsley's teacher 

at Helston, 32 ; reminiscences by, 

33- 

Colorado Springs, 469. 

Congreve, Capt. , memories by, 283. 

Conington, Prof, reviews " The Saint's 
Tragedy," 92. 

Conscience, incident of Maurice's lec- 
ture on, 387. 

" Constitutionalism of the Future," let- 
ter to Prof Lorimer on, ^iTi- 

Comte, lectures on, at Cambridge, 400. 

Cooper, Thomas, acquaintance with, 
begins, 108 ; letters to, 108, 187- 
200. 

Cornell University, 460. 

Cotton famine, controversy about with 
Lancashire mill-owners, 319. 

Cranworth, Lord, 287. 

" Crime and its Punishment," pamphlet 
on, by Henry Taylor, 388. 

Crimean war, 207, 215. 

Crystal Palace, question of opening on 
Sunday, 171 ; letter from Kingsley 
on, 172. 

"Culture and Anarchy," Matthew Ar- 
nold's, 420. 

Culture, address on, at Berkeley Uni- 
versity, Cal. , 468. 

Curtis, G. W., 455. 



D 



ARWIN, 210; " Originof Species " 
and " Fertilization of Orchids," 
327 ; conquering, 337 ; letters to, 
on "Natural Selection," 339, 377, 
378 ; Kingsley oh progress of Dar 
winism, 378. 



Index. 



495 



David, sermons on, 355. 

Death of Kingsley, 482. 

" Delectable Day, The," verses on, 
438. 

Detroit, 461, 

" Deutsche Theologie " by Bunsen, Miss 
Winkworth translates, and Kingsley 
writes preface to, 207, 209. 

Development theory, letter to H. Bates 
on, 339, 

Devonshire, Duke of, installed as Chan- 
cellor of Cambridge, 320. 

Diphtheria appears at Eversley, 278. 

Disestablishment discussed in letter to 
Thomas Cooper, 199, 

Drummond, Henry, letters from, on 
" Westward Ho ! " 220. 

Dunn, Henry, memories by, 390, 



■pBRINGTON, Lord, 469. 

Edinburgh, Kingsley lectures on 
" Schools of Alexandria " at, 205, 

'' Education of the Working Classes, 
how can the State best help in," 
paper by Henry de Bunsen, 403. 

Education League, Kingsley joins, 404. 

"Egotism," article on, by Lionel Tolle- 
mache, 402. 

Elegiacs composed on Morte Sands, 
112. 

Emancipated Women, letter from Kings- 
ley to John Stuart Mill on, 417. 

Emma, Queen of Sandwich Islands, 
visits Eversley, 361 ; writes letter to 
Dr. Benson of Wellington College, 
361 ; letter from, to Kingsley, 362. 

Endless Torment, letter to Thomas 
Cooper on, 194, 

Epicedium, 165. 

Erie Railroad, narrow escape from acci- 
dent on, 460. 

Erskine, Henry, death of, 356. 

Erskine, Rt. Hon. Thomas, settles at 
Eversley, 164. 

"Essays and Reviews," letter from 
Kingsley to Dean Stanley on, 316 ; 
letter on, to Bishop of Winchester 
(Dr. Sumner), 367. 

Eversley, Kingsley made Curate of, 54 ; 
parish described, 58 ; life at, de- 
scribed by mother, 67; Kingsley 
settles as Rector of, 76 ; parish work 
at, TJ \ first confirmation, 79; low 
contagious fever breaks out in, 118 ; 
flood in, 129 ; study window of rec- 
tory, 396; life at rectory described 
by Rev. Wm. Harrison, 395 ; Kings- 
ley's grave in church-yard at, 488. 

Eyre, Ex-Gov. of Jamaica, Kingsley's 
defence of, 370. 

" Ezekiel's Vision," sermon before 
the Queen, 354. 



Tn*AME and Praise, Kingsley on, 229. 

Farley Court, winter at, 233. 

Field, Cyrus W., 463, 465, 466. 

Field, James T., 459. 

'' Firmley Murder," 135. 

Fishing for trout at Salisbury, 74 ; de- 
scription of fishing excursion, 107 ; 
on the Torridge, 119 ; Notes on, 
to Thomas Hughes, 139 ; expedition 
to Snowdon with Tom Hughes and 
Tom Taylor, 235 ; lines to wife on, 
241 ; letter to Tom Hughes on, 242 ; 
in Strathficidsaye, 272 ; kills first 
salmon at Markree Castle, 308 ; 
catching salmon in Scotland, 321 ; 
letter to Froude on, 340. 

Forster, Rt. Hon. E. , 284. 

Fortesque, Dudley, 469. 

Fraser's Magazine, edited by Kingsley, 
376. 

Freedmen's Aid Union, letter to T. 
Hughes inquiring about, 382. 

" Frithiofs Saga" presented to Kings- 
ley by Fredrika Bremer, 170. 

Froude, on Oxford and Cambridge Re- 
view 86, 93, 94 ; becomes ac- 
quainted with his future wife, Mrs. 
Kingsley's sister, iii ; at Clovelly 
met Kingsley, 114, 117 ; quoted as 
an authority on natural phenomena 
of Snowdon, 276 ; letter to, 340 ; 
goes to Spain to examine Simancas 
MSS., 347, 376; letter to, from 
Kingsley on settlement at Chester, 
413 ; opinion of ballad of Lorraine, 
472. 

Froude, Mrs. J. A., death of, 306. 

Funeral of Kingsley, 484. 



GASKELL, Mrs., letter from Kings- 
ley vindicating her from attack, 
180; letter from Kingsley to, on 
Miss Bronte's " Life," 269. 

Oilman, D. C.,468. 

Geological Society, Kingsley made Fel- 
low of, 326. 

Gladstone nominates Kingsley to Can- 
onry of Chester, 404 ; letter from, 
appointing Kingsley Canon of 
Westminster, 441. 

" Glaucus," origin of, 203, 

Glyder, melodrama on the, 276. 

Good Words, 319. 

Gordon, Sir Arthur, invites Kingsley to 
visit Trinidad, 399. 

Gosse, H. P., Kingsley sends specimens 
to, 202 ; letter to, 203 ; meeting 
with, 210. 

Grant, U. S. President, 457. 

Gray, Dr. Asa, 338, 456. 

Gray, J. A. C, 463, 468. 

" Great Cities, their influence for Good 
and Evil," 275. 



496 



Index. 



Great Exhibition, 135 ; sermon on open- 
ing of, 140 ; question of opening 
on Sunday, 172, 173. 

Grenfell, Fanny, Kingsley married to, 

74- 

Grenfell, Charlotte, wife of J. A. Froude, 
death of, 306. 

Grenfell, Charles, death of, 306. 

Grove, George, letter to, from Kings- 
ley on keeping Crystal Palace open 
on Sunday, 170. 

Gull, Sir William, 480. 



HANSARD, Rev. Septimus, assists 
Kingsley at Eversley, 316. 

Hants and Wilts Education Society, 
lectures before, 278. 

Hare, Archdeacon, 94 ; consulted about 
protest against dismissal of Maurice 
from King's College, 185 ; letter 
from, touching dismissal, 185 ; wor- 
ried about Maurice's affairs, 206. 

Harrison, Rev. William, memories by, 
391, 482. 

Harrow-on-the-Hill, 441. 

Harvard, address on American Lecture- 
ship in Cambridge, 364. 

Harvey, Lord Arthur, Bishop of Bath 
and Wells, 311. 

Hay, Col. John, 456. 

Hayden, Prof., 457. 

Helps, Sir Arthur, Kingsley writes to, 
on sanitary matters, 205. 

Henry, Dr., 457. 

Henslowe, Rev. Geo. .letter from Kings- 
ley to, on sense of humor in Crea- 
tor, 274. 

" Hermits" for Sunday Library, 387,398. 

"Heroes, The,'' book of Greek fairy 
tales, by Kingsley, 228. 

" Heroism," lectures on, 437. 

Hildyard, Canon of Chester, letter from, 

443- 

" Hereward the Wake," seeds of, 29. 

" High Church Parson " (Rev. Baldwin 
Brown), on keeping Crystal Palace 
open on Sunday, 173. 

Hippocampus Question, controversy on, 
between Owen and Huxley, 322 ; 
burlesque speech of Lord Dun- 
dreary on, by Kingsley, 322. 

Holiest, clergyman of Frimley, murder- 
ed, 130. 

Hooker, Dr. Joseph, 311. 

Housebreaking and robbery in Hamp- 
shire, Surrey, and Sussex, 130. 

Howard, George, letter from, 366. 

Howson, Dean, memories of Kingsley 
by, 445 ; preaches sermon on Kings- 
ley's life, 484. 

Hughes, Prof., President of Chester 
Scientific Society, 449. 

Hughes, Thomas, Kingsley becomes 
acquainted with, 94 ; preface by, to 



" Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," 97 ; 
recollections of Kingsley by, 97 ; 
defends Kingsley from charge of 
being a Chartist, loi ; letter from 
Kingsley to, 138 ; letter from 
Kingsley to, on Iron lockout, 160 ; 
on the Crimean War, 214, 215 ; on 
fishing excursion to Snowdon, 234- 
246, 247 ; invitation in verse to visit 
Snowdon, 248 ; gossip about fish- 
ing, 242 ; letter to, on '' Two Years 
Ago," 265; on occasion of Kings- 
ley's thirty-eighth birthday, 270 ; on 
" Tom Brown," 271 ; on fortieth 
birthday, 288 ; letter to, about Mill 
and Maurice, 356 ; letter to, inquir- 
ing about Freedmen's Aid Union, 
382. 

Human Physiology and Science of 
Health, lectures on, founded at 
Birmingham, 436. 

Humor, sense of, in the Creator, letter 
on, 274. 

" Hypatia," reference to " Oxford 
Tracts '' in introduction to, 43 ; be- 
gun as serial in Fraser's, 135 ; letter 
to J. M. Ludlow, 165 ; published as 
a book, 178 ; condemned as immor- 
al by Professor of Hebrew in Cam- 
bridge, 342 ; Whittier's opinion of, 

473- 
Huxley, letter to, 339. 
Huxley and Owen, on Hippocampus 

Question, 322. 
" Hypotheses Hypochondriacae,'' 36. 
" Hyppolytus," Baron Bunsen's, 178, 

180. 



TGNATIUS and Hyppolytus, Baron 
-•- Bunsen's, 178,* 180. 
Ilfracombe, Kingsley recruiting at, iii. 
Indians of N. America, Kingsley's views 

of, 387- 
Indian Mutiny, news of, received, 267 ; 

Kingsley s distress over, 275. 
Invitation, in verse, to fishing trip on 

Snowdon, to Tom Hughes and Tom 

Taylor, 248. 
Iron trade lockout, letter from Kingsley 

on, 160. 
Ithaca, 464. 

TAMIESON'S (Mrs.) " Sacred and 

J Legendary Art,'' article on, in Fra^ 
ser. III. 

'' Jane Eyre,'" 266. 

Jews' tin and Jews' houses, 371. 

J inns. The, 372. 

Jowett, Prof., 380. 

Justice of God, letter to Thomas Coo- 
per on, 189. 

" Juventus Mundi," poem by Kingsley, 
452. 



Index. 



497 



KINGSLEY, CHARLES, birth of, 
21 ; descent, 21 ; account of his 
father, 21 ; mother, 22 ; account of 
maternal grandfather, 23 ; letter 
about Button Cap, 25 ; sermon 
and poems at four years of age, 25, 
26 ; juvenile reminiscences, 28 ; be- 
gins study of conchology, 30 ; life 
at Clovelly, Devonshire, 30, 31 ; at 
Helston Grammar School under Der- 
went Coleridge, 32, 34, 36 ; entered 
at King's College, 38 ; entered at 
Magdalene College and gains schol- 
larship, 41 ; first meets future wife, 
42 ; thinks of going to the Far West, 
44 ; difficulties about Trinity, 46 ; 
pedestrian feats, 48 ; decides on the 
Church as a profession, 51 ; leaves 
Cambridge, S3 ; Curate of Eversley, 
54; ordained at Farnham, 56; first 
day of public ministration at Evers- 
ley, 59 ; engagement to future wife, 
6g ; Curate of Blandford, 69 ; do- 
mestic arrangements at Pimperne, 
72 ; married to Fanny Grenfell, 74 ; 
presented to living of Eversley, 76 ; 
settled as Rector of Eversley, 76 ; 
first confirmation at, 79 ; first per- 
sonal acquaintance with Maurice, 
80 ; Honorary Canon of Middleham, 
85 ; eldest son born, 91 ; lionized at 
Oxford, 92 ; Professor of English 
Literature in Queen's College, 93 ; 
proposed for professorship in Kings' 
College, 107; breaks down while 
writing " Yeast," 109 ; in ill-health at 
Ilfracombe, iii ; decides to take 
pupils, 113 ; letter to a young man 
going over to Church of Rome, 114 ; 
breaks down nursing sick at Evers- 
ley, 118 ; resigns office of Clerk in 
Orders at Chelsea, 127 ; finishes "Al- 
ton Locke," 127; letter in reply to 
attack on "Yeast" in the Guar- 
dian, 142 ; publicly rebuked by In- 
cumbent of a London church for 
sermon to working men, 146 ; visits 
Germany, 148 ; correspondence with 
Maurice touching dismissal from 
King's College, 181-185 ; classed as 
unorthodox, 202 ; lectures at Edin- 
burgh on " Schools of Alexandria," 
205 ; writes preface to Bunsen's 
" Deutsche Theologie," 207; con- 
ference with Palmerston on sanitary 
matters, 207 ;. letter from, to a lady 
on joining a sisterhood, 210 ; lectures 
on Fine Arts at Bideford, 221 ; facility 
in sketching, 223 ; address on work of 
ladies in country parish, 223 • writes 
the " Heroes," book of Greek fairy 
tales, 228 ; winter at Farley Court, 
233; " Two Years Ago, "234; fishing 
excursion to Snowdon with Tom 
Hughes and Tom Taylor, 254 ; invi- 

32 



tation to, 248 ; verses in visitors' 
book at Pen-y-gwryd, 252 ; fall from 
a horse, 255 ; writes preface to life 
of Tauler, 256; completes " Two 
Years Ago," 265 ; made Fellow of 
Linnaean Society, 265 ; views on 
marriage, 267 ; fights diphtheria at 
Eversley, 278; rebuke to an "ad- 
vanced thinker," 280 ; poems pub- 
lished, 280 ; preaches before Queen 
and made a Chaplain in Ordinary, 
286 ; preaches sermon at marriage 
of niece to Max Miiller, 287 ; address 
to Ladies' Sanitary Association, 
291 ; appointed Regius Professor of 
Modern History at Cambridge, 303 ; 
takes his degree of M. A, 307 ; made 
chaplain of Civil Service Volunteers, 
308 ; preaches sermon for Trinity 
House, by command of Prince Con- 
sort, 308 ; sermon on ''Why should 
we Pray for fair Weather ?" 309 ; 
inaugural lecture at Cambridge on 
" The Limits of Exact Science 
applied to History," 311 ; lectures 
on " The Roman and the Teuton," 
311 ; lectures before Prince of 
Wales on Modern History, 314 ; 
letter to Dean Stanley on " Essays 
and Reviews," 316 ; lectures on 
history of American States, 319 ; 
writes installation ode for Duke of 
Devonshire as Chancellor of Cam- 
bridge, 320 ; visits Scotland, 321 ; 
burlesque speech of Lord Dundrea- 
ry on Hippocampus question, 322 ; 
made Fellow of Geological Society, 
326 ; Chaplain to Prince of Wales, 
327 ; lecture on " Art of Learning," 
330 ; proposed by Prmce of Wales to 
Oxford for degree of D.C.L., 342 ; 
name withdrawn, 342 ; sermon on 
Pentateuch, 343 ; publishes "Water- 
babies," 345 ; controversy over New- 
man's " Apologia pro vita sua," 346 ; 
starts for Spain with Froude, 347; 
preaches before Queen on " Ezeki- 
el's Vision " in Chapel Royal, 354 ; 
sermons on David, 355 ; visited by 
Queen Emma of Sandwich Islands, 
361 ; lines on death of King Leo- 
pold, 362 ; address on proposed 
American Lectureship in Cam- 
bridge, 364 ; lectures at Royal In- 
stitution on Science and Supersti- 
tion, 368 ; defence of ex-Gov. Eyre, 
370 ; edits Fraser's Magazine for 
Froude, 376 ; on Darwinism, 378 ; 
visits Scotland, 379; how to cure 
stammering, 383 ; lectures on i6th 
Century, 386 ; incident in Maurice's 
lecture room, 387 ; " Hermits," 387 ; 
" Madam How and Lady Why," 
387 ; resigns Cambridge professor- 
ship, 398, 400 ; attends Women's 



^498 



Index. 



Suffrage meeting with J. Stuart Mill, 
398 ; made Canon of Chester, 402 ; 
presides over educational section 
of Social Science Congress, 403 ; 
joins Education League, 404 ; in- 
stalled Canon at Chester, 406 ; sails 
for West Indies, 406; arrival at 
Trinidad, 408 ; return from West 
Indies, 410 ; lectures at Sion College 
on theology of the future, 422 ; presi- 
dent of Midland Institute, 435 ; ap- 
pointed Canon of Westminster, 414; 
farewell to Chester, 442 ; death of 
mother, 442 ; first residence in 
Westminster, 449, 451 ; sermon in, 
452 ; sails for America, 452 ; ar- 
rival at New York, 454 ; Boston and 
Cambridge, 455 ; Philadelphia, 457 ; 
Washington, 457 ; opens Session of 
House with prayer, 458 ; Western 
trip, 461-470 ; severely ill in Colora- 
do, 468; returns to Eversley, 474 ; 
attack of congestion of liver, 474 ; 
last illness, 477 ; death, 482 ; burial 
at Eversley, 483 ; grave, 488 ; memo- 
rial fund, 489 ; chronological list of 
works, 491. 

Kingsley ancestry, 413. 

Kingsley, Charles, father. Rector of 
Holne, 21 ; Rector of Barnack, 24; 
Rector of Clovelly and St. Luke's, 
30, 38 ; death of, 304 ; epitaph on, 

304- 
Kingsley, Gen., Governor of Fort Wil- 
liam, 279. 
Kingsley, Herbert, living of Barnack 

held for, 24 ; death of, 35. 
Kingsley, Mrs., description of future 

husband, when she first met him, 42 ; 

marriage, 74 ; narrow escape of, 237 ; 

serious illness of, 477. 
Kingsley, Lieut., death of, 84. 
Kingsley, Miss Rose, letter from father 

to, 107 ; account of travels in United 

States, .1.54 et seq. 
Kingsley, Maurice, memories of father 

by, 261 ; at home from Mexico, 442. 
Kingsley, Grenville Arthur, second son 

born, 283. 
Kingsley, Mrs., mother of Charles, 

death of, 442. 
Kingsley, Dr., 468. 
Kingsley, Dr. William, of New Haven, 

459- 
Knowledge of God, letter to Thomas 
Cooper on, 193. 



LABORING Man, Message of Church 
to, sermon by Kingsley, 145. 
Ladies" Sanitary Association, address 

to, 291. 
Ladies, work of, in country parish, ad- 
dress 0.1 by Kingsley, 223. 
Land Colo lization question, 117. 



Last illness of Kingsley, 477-482. 

" Levana," by Jean Paul, quotations 
from, 257. 

Lees, Mr., reads for Holy Orders with 
Kingsley, 129. 

Leopold, King of Belgium, death of, 
362. 

"Limits of Exact Science applied to 
History," Kingsley 's inaugural lec- 
ture at Cambridge, 311. 

Linnaean Society, Kingsley made Fellow 
of, 265. 

London Quarterly Review, favorable 
notice of Kingsley 's works in, 269. 

Long Game (The), 135. 

Longfellow, H. W. , 388 ; dines with, at 
Cambridge, Mass., 456. 

Lorimer, Prof. , letter to on ' ' Constitu- 
tionalism of the Future," 373. 

" Lorraine," ballad of, 471. 

Lotos Club, reception by, 454. 

Loyalty and Sanatory Reform, sermon 
on, 433. 

Ludlow, John Malcolm, 94 ; letters to, 
105, 128, 131, 165, 168, 228, 232; 

Lyell, Sir Charles, letter from, to Kings- 
ley on rain sermon, 309, 311 ; sec- 
onds Kingsley's nomination as 
Fellow of Geological Society, 326 ; 
letter from Kingsley to, 337 ; made 
member of Natural Science Society 
at Chester, 424. 



MACLEOD, Dr. Norman, death of, 
434- 

" Madam How," written, 283. 

"Madam How and Lady Why," 387, 
398. 

Mallet, Sir Charles, 311. 

Man and woman, intellectual relations 
between, 55. 

Mansfield, Charles B., 118; death of, 
216 ; sketch of, by Kingsley, 217. 

Manchester Exhibition, 267. 

Mariposa Grove, 467. 

Mark Twain, 459. 

Marriage, Kingsley's views on, 267 ; 
eternity of, 299 ; views on second 
marriage, 302. 

Martineau, John, recollections of Kings- 
ley by, 149. 

Marty n, Henry, life of, 74. 

Massacre of Innocents, 286. 

Maurice, "Kingdom of Christ" first 
read, 61 ; Kingsley's first personal 
acquaintance with, 80 ; letter from, 
81 ; sponsor to Kingsley's eldest 
son, 91 ; writes preface to Kingsley's 
life of St. Elizabeth, 91 ; trying to 
control Chartist outbreak, 95 ; ex- 
cursion to Crowland Abbey with, 
107 , letter from, to Prof. Thompson 
commending Kingsley as tutor, 113; 
letters from Kingsley to, 131, 135, 



Index. 



499 



236 ; on Kingsley's reply to review 
of "Yeast" in Guardian, 142; 
anecdote of, by John Martineau , 
153 ; " Tlieological Essays," 181 ; 
dismissed from King's College for 
sermon on Eternal Life and Death, 
181 ; letters from Kingsley on dis- 
missal, 181, 184 ; Kingsley visits, in 
London, 206; views on Kingsley 
writing preface to "■ Deutsche The- 
ologie," 208 ; letter to, from Kings- 
ley on Sabbath question, 243 ; let- 
ter to, from Kingsley on father's 
death, 305 ; superintends issue of 
" Tracts for Priests and People," 
318 ; letter to, on Darwinism, 337 ; 
letter to, on Pentateuch, 343 ; letter 
to, on Stanley's lectures on Jewish 
Church, 344 ; letter to, on Athana- 
sian Creed, 354 ; letter to, on ser- 
mons on David, 355 ; letter to, on 
Doctrine of the Trinity, and Sub- 
scription to Articles, 359 ; letter to, 
on Savonarola, 360 ; appointed to 
Chair of Moral Philosophy at Cam- 
bridge, 366 ; incident of lecture on 
Conscience, 387 ; at dinner to Long- 
fellow, 388 ; letter to, on overwork, 
399; death of, 434, 435- 

Medical Education of Women, 404. 

Memorial Fund to Kingsley, 485, 489, 
490. 

Meteor shower, 372. 

Middleham, Kingsley Honorary Canon 
of, 85. 

Mills, D. 0.,46s. 

Mill, John Stuart, letter from, 297; let- 
ters to, from Kingsley on Woman 
question, 401 ; Kingsley's personal 
impressions of, 401 ; letter from 
Kingsley to, on Womans' Rights. 
416 

Mitford, Miss, mistakes his curate for 
Kingsley, 125, 135. 

Montagu, Rev. James, letter from, 50. 

Montagu, Col. Geo. and Montagu's 
Chirodota, 203. 

Montagu, Lord Robert, letter to, on re- 
vivals, 299. 

Money difficulties, Kingsley on, 206. 

Monsell, Rev. Dr., letter from, about 
" Santa Maura,'' 281. 

Muller, Max, criticism on " Saga," 165 ; 
on Kingsley at sea-shore, 204; visits 
Kingsley, 265 ; marriage of, to 
Kingsley's neice, 287 ; letter to, on 
Jews' Tin, Jews' Houses, and Ger- 
many, 371 ; on funeral of Kingsley, 
484. 



NAPIER, Sir W., description of, an- 
swering to that of Kingsley, 260. 
Napier, Mrs. Wm , asks Kingsley to 
bless new regimental colors, 279. 



Napier, Sir Charles, on the 22nd Regt., 

279. 
Narbonne, 350. 

National Subjects, sermons on, 174. 
" Nature's Melodrama," 277. 
"Natural Selection," Wallace's Essay 

on, 419. 
New Haven, 459. 
Newman's (Dr.) Apologia pro vita sua, 

controversy over, 346. 
Newman, F., 117. 
Niagara visited, 461. 
Nismes, 351. 

" North-East Wind, Ode to," 310. 
Novel writing, Kingsley on, 105. 
" Nun's Pool, The," 135. 



ODE to the North-East Wind, by 
Kingsley, 310. 
Omaha, 463. 
Owen and Huxley on Hippocampus 

question, 322. 
Owen, Prof., 118. 

Oxford and Cambridge Review, 85, 86. 
" Oxford Tracts," Kingsley's first im- 
pressions of, 43. 



PALESTINE, questions about geo- 
logy of, 310. 
Palmer, Gen. and Mrs. , 469. 
Parker, John, publisher, 94. 
Parson Lot, origin of nont de plume,, 98 ; 

on British Museum, 105 ; last words 

in " Christian Socialist," 164. 
Patteson, Bishop, letter to Max Muller 

on, 435. 
Pau, 349. 
Paul, Rev. C. Kegan, Memories of 

Kingsley by, 121 ; letter to, 130 ; let- 
ter to, about Justice to Catholics, 

285. 
Pen-y-gwryd, lines in visitors' book at, 

by Tom Hughes, Tom Taylor, and 

Kingsley, 252. 
Penny Readings, 367. 
Pentateuch, Kingsley's sermons on, 343. 
Penrose, Frank, letter from, 50. 
" Pepys's Diary " expurgated, 402. 
Periodical proposed, 89. 
Perkins, Mrs., sister of Mrs. H. B, 

Stowe, visits Eversley, 234. 
Peterson, C. J., 457. 
Philadelphia visited, 457. 
"Pilgrim's Progress" illustrated, 289, 

298. 
''Pilgrimage of Grace," unfinished 

novel, 284. 
Plucknett, Mr., memories by, 222. 
Poems published, 280. 
Poetry, advice to an Oxford friend on 

writing and publishing, 109. 
Poetic faculty, Kingsley's opinion of his 

own, 169. 



500 



Index. 



■' Politics for People," appearance of 
first number, 99. 

Popery and Protestantism, struggle be- 
tween, 88. 

Popery, article on, in Frasers Magazine, s^ 

93- 

Potter, U. S. Senator, 460. 

Poverty, views of, 60. 

Powles, Rev. R.. C. , reminiscences of 
Kingsley at Helston Grammar 
School, 34 ; letter to, 88. 

Price, Rev. Elis, 474. 

Prince Consort, 286 ; by command of, 
Kingsley delivers annual sermon at 
Trinity House, 308 ; delivers lec- 
tures before Prince of Wales on , 
Modern History, 314 ; death of, 316, 
319. 

Prince of Wales, Kingsley lectures 
before, on Modern History, 314 ; 
marriage of, 327; proposes Kings- 
ley's name to Oxford for degree of 
D.C.L. , 342; in Bramshill Park 
Camp, 432 ; attacked with fever, 
432 ; sends Sir William Gull to at- 
tend Kingsley, 480. 

Pulliblank, Rev. J. , memories by, 386. 

Punishment, corporal, Kingsley 's views 
of, 389. 

Punishment of children, Kingsley's 
views of, 258. 

" Purgatory of Suicides," by Thomas 
Cooper, 108. 



i^UEEN'S Chaplain, Kingsley ap- 
>^ pointed, 286. 

Queen, sermon before on " Ezekiel's 
Vision," 354. 



■p ABELAIS, Kingsley learns from. 



rv 



119. 



Ragged School, Kingsley on, 226. 
Rain, sermon by Kingsley on, 309. 
Reading for Orders, advice on, to C. 

Kegan Paul, 130: 
Regius Professor of Modern History at 

Cambridge, 303. 
Revivals and revivalists, 299. 
Richter, Jean Paul, 259. 
Rigg, Rev. Dr., letter to, 269. 
'• Roman and the Teuton, The," lectures 

on, by Kingsley at Cambridge, 

311. 
Rome, Church of, Kingsley's advice to 

young man about going over to, 

114. 
Romilly, spot where drowned, 284. 
Rothery, Mr. and Mrs. H. C. , 4S8, 463. 

469, 
Royal Wedding, Prince of Wales, 327. 
Rusfiell, Francis, letter from Kingsley 

to, 255. 



SABBATH question, letter to Maurice 
on, 244. 
Sacramento, 465. 
" Saint's Tragedy," published, 92. 
Salt Lake City, 464. 
Sanitary Matters, conference with Lord 

Palmerston on, 207 ; gives evidence 

on before House of Commons, 210 ; 

clergy urged to attend to, 205. 
Sanitary Science, lectures on, 286. 
Sanitary Reform, connection of women 

with, 291. 
"Santa Maura," 135; publication of, 

280 ; Kingsley to Maurice on letter 

from Dr.Monsell on, 281 ; Kingsley's 

reply, 282. 
Savonarola, letter to Maurice on, 360. 
Schools of Alexandria, Kingsley lectures 

on, at Edinburgh, 205. 
Schulze, Dr. Karl, 440. 
Science and Superstition, lectures on at 

Royal Institution, 368. 
Science Congress, 404. 
Science of Health, classes and lectures 

on, founded at Birmingham, 436. 
Scriptures, study ot, letter from F. D. 

Maurice on, 81. 
Self-improvement, Kingsley's views on, 

70. 
Sermons for the Times, 227 ; good 

worked by, 240 ; letter to Kingsley 

on, from chaplain, 272. 
Seymour, Sir Michael, 238. 
Shaw, F. G., 454- 
Shairp, Prof., memories of Kingsley by, 

381. 
Shields, Frederic, letter to, on illustrat- 
ing " Pilgrim's Progress," 298. 
Shirley, 269. 
Sisterhood, letter from Kingsley to a 

lady enjoining, 211. 
Sixteenth Century, lectures on, 386. 
Sketching, Kingsley's facility in, 223. 
Smith, Rev. H. Percy, Curate of Evers- 

ley, 118. 
Smoking, Kingsley defends his habit of, 

129. 
Snowdon, expedition to, with Tom 
. Hughes and Tom Taylor proposed, 

234 ; invitation, 248 ; starting, 251 ; 

lines in visitors' book, 252. 
Social Science Congress at Bristol, 403. 
Sorrow and its lessons, 167. 
St. Louis, 461, 462. 
" St. Elizabeth of Hungary," Life of, 

commenced by Kingsley, 56 ; opin- 
ion of Coleridge on, 90 ; drama of, 

published by Parker, 91. 
Stammering, how to cure, 383. 
Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, 94. 
Stanley's " Sinai," 214; Kingsley's views 

of lectures on Ecclesiastical History, 

282 ; first visit to Eversley, 287 ; on 

Kingsley's controversy with Dr. 

Newman, 347 ; letter from Kingsley 



Index. 



501 



to, on '' Essays and Reviews," 316 ; 
" Lectures on the Jewish Church," 
letter to Maurice on, 344 ; letter 
from, on Kingsley's death, 482 ; 
preaches sermon on, 483. 
Stowe, Mrs. Beecher, visits Eversley, 

234- 

Strauss's "Leben Jesu," 129. 

Strettell, Rev. Alfred, succeeds Kings- 
ley at Queen's College, 114. 

Study of History, 354. 

Subjection of Women, J. Stuart Mill's 
work on, 400. 

Suffering working out perfection, 227. 

Sumner, Charles, Kingsley introduced 
to, 458 ; sudden death of, 458. 



TAULER'S Life, Kingsley writes pre- 
face to, 255. 

Taylor, Tom, fishing excursion to Snow- 
don with Kingsley, 234. 

Taylor, Henry, on crime and its punish- 
ment, 388. 

Taylor, Mrs. Peter, letter from Kingsley 
to, on women's suffrage, 415. 

Teaching, Kingsley's plan of, 113. 

Teetotalism, 137. 

Temperance question, 451. 

Tennyson's poems first mentioned, 56 ; 
Tennyson collecting Arthurian le- 
gends at Torridge Moors, 119 ; King- 
sley visits Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson 
at Isle of Wight, 287. 

Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," Kingsley's 
judgment of, 269. 

" T h ology of the Future," lecture on, 
by Kingsley, 421. 

Thompson, Yates, of Liverpool, pro- 
poses to establish American Lec- 
tureship at Cambridge, 364 ; offer 
rejected, 366. 

" Thoughts in a Gravel Pit," lecture on, 

275- 
"Three Fishers," circumstances under 

vi^hich written, 157. 
Titnes, London, on Woolner's bust of 

Kingsley, 485. 
Toads in a hole, letter to Rev. E. Pit- 
cairn Campbell on, 341. 
Tollemache, Lionel, Kingsley's views of 

article on Egotism by, 402. 
"Tom Brown," Kingsley's opinion of, 

271. 
Torquay described, 201. 
Total abstinence, 451. 
"Town and Country Sermons," 325. 
'' Town Geology," lectures by Kingsley, 

425. 
Tractarians, 89. 
"Tracts for the Times," Kingsley's 

opinion of characterization by £d- 

inburgh Review, 51. 
" Tracts for Priests and People," issued 



under superintendence of Mr. Mau- 
rice, 318. 
Trades Unions, letter from Kingsley on, 

239- 

Transmutation Theory, 203. 

Treves, visit to, 148. 

Trinidad, arrival at, 408. 

Trinity, letter to Thomas Cooper on, 
198. 

Trinity, doctrine of, letter to Maurice 
on, 357. 

Tulloch, Principal, 379. 

" Twenty-five Village Sermons," 174. 

" Two Years Ago," completed, 265; fa- 
vorable opinion of, 268 ; letter from 
a naval chaplain about, 273; influ- 
ence of, 272. 



UNITED STATES, Kingsley and 
daughter sail for, 452. 



V 



AN DE WEYER, M., 379. 



Verses by Kingsley, 120. 

" Vestiges of Creation, The," 203. 

Vicars, Capt. Hedley, death of, 216. 

"Village Sermons," 117. 

Visitors' book at Pen-y-gwryd, lines in, 

by Kingsley, Hughes, and Taylor, 

252. 



WAGES of sin is death ; sermon at 
Chapel Royal St. James's, 354. 

Wallace, Alfred " Essay on Natural Se- 
lection," 419. 

Warre, John Ashley, death of, 306. 

Washington visited, 457-460. 

" Waterbabies, The," written, 283, 320, 
345- 

Wellington College, Kingsley's interest 
in, 328 ; lecture on Natural History, 
before, 330. 

Westminster, Kingsley made Canon of, 
441 ; first residence at, 451 ; sermon 
in Abbey, before sailing for Ameri- 
ca, 452 ; allusion in sermon to tele- 
gram from Kingsley by Dean of 
Westminster, 466 ; Kingsley's last 
sermon in, 475 ; Dean of Westmins- 
ter at Kingsley's funeral, 483 ; Wool- 
ner's bust of Kingsley unveiled in 
Westminster Abbey, 485. 

"Westward Ho! " commenced, 210; 
correspondence about, 220, 221 ; 
letter from naval officer on, 238. 

West Indies, Kingsley sails for, 406 ; re- 
turn from, 410. 

Wharton, Dr., 456. 

Whewell, Dr., 303 ; directs formation of 
class on Modern History under 
Kingsley's instruction, for Prince 
of Wales, 315 ; death of, 363. 



502 



Index. 



Whittier, J. G. , letter from, 472. 

" Why should we pray for fair wea- 
ther ? " sermon, 309. 

Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, congrat- 
ulatory note from, on appointment to 
Chester, 403 ; congratulates Kings- 
ley on appomtment to Westminster, 

443- 
Winchester, Bishop of, letter from 
Kingsley to, on " Essays and Re- 
views," 317 ; at Kingsley's funeral, 

483. 

Winkworth, Miss, translates Bunsen's 
" Deutsche Theologie," 207 ; letter 
to, from Kingsley about preface to 
" Life of Tauler," 255. 

Winthrop, J. C, 457. 

Women, and Sanitary reform, 293. 

Women, medical education of, discussed 
at Social Science Congress at Bris- 
tol, 404. 

Women's Suffrage, letter to Mrs. Peter 
Taylor on, 415 ; letter to John Stu- 
art Mill on, 416. 

" Wonders of the Shore," 202, 203. 

Wood, Dean of Middleham, appoints 
Kingsley Honorary Canon, 85. 

Wood, Peter A. L. H. , Rector of Cop- 



ford, letter to, 67 ; visits Eversley 
68. 

Woolner's bust of Kingsley unveiled in 
Westminster Abbey, 485. 

Wordsworth's " Excursion," 75. 

Work of ladies in a country parish, 
address on by Kingsley, 223. 

" Working parson. A," 96. 

Working men, sermons to, 145. 

Workmen's Club, literature recom- 
mended for, 319. 

Workmen, Kingsley's address to, 95. 



Y 



ALE College, 459. 



" Yeast," published as serial in Eraser's 
Magazine, 92 ; Kingsley breaks 
down while writing, 109 ; publica- 
tion of, provokes enemies, 133 ; re- 
viewed unfairly in Guardian, 141 ; 
testimony to good influence of, 143, 
266. 

Yosemite Valley, Kingsley preaches in, 

465- 
Young, Brigham, 463. 
Young men, Kingsley's sympathy with, 

163. 



^Authorized Edition printed from duplicate plates of the complete English 
Edition, with all the illustrations.] 



MEMOIR OF 

NORMAN MACLEOD, D.D., 

Minister of Barony Parish^ Glasgow ; one of her Majesty's 
Chaplains, Dean of the Chapel Royal, etc. 

BY HIS BROTHER, REV. DONALD MACLEOD, B.A., 

One of Her Majesty's Chaplains, Editor of 
" Good Words," etc. 

WITH STEEL PORTRAIT AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 

New and Cheaper Edition. Two volumes in one. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $2.50. , 



In less than a month after publication this Memoir reached a sale of 
SEVEN THOUSAND copies in Great Britain. It is one of the liveliest, most 
amusing, and at the same time most profitable of recent biographies. 

The volume overflows with racy and characteristic Scotch anecdotes, 
while Dr. Macleod's irrepressible buoyancy of spirits sparkles on every page 
and now and then breaks out in pen and ink caricatures, suggestive of 
Thackeray in his best vein. 

CRITICAL NOTICES. 



From the Atla7itic Monthly. 
" The life of Dr. Macleod is one of the most interesting and affecting biographies of a 
year singularly prolific in important memoirs. It is written by his brother, the Rev. Donald 
Macleod, and is beautifully written, with great tenderness, and at the same time a most 
dignified restraint of eulogy." 

From the New York Observer. 

"To a remarkable list of interesting memoirs of prominent men that have appeared 
within the last twelve months is now added the one of which the title is given above. The 
relations of Dr. Macleod, not only to the religious and literary public, but to the royal 
household, his prominence as a man of talent and influence, and his genia! character, have 
awakened expectations in regard to his biography that will not be disappointed. 
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" A very enjoyable and instructive book we have found it to be, in the variety of its 
contents, and in the insight which it has gi\en us unto the heart of a very noble Christian." 
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" We would commend the book as one in which no person whose heart is in tlie right 
place can fail to be greatly interested." 

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" There is something very refreshing and invigorating in the memoirs of such a man as 
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"The work is one of uncommon interest." 
Se?it post paid on receipt of price by the publishers, 

SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., 

743 & 745 Broadway, New York. 



The Life and W^ritings of 
Saint John. 

BY THE 

Rev. JAMES M. MACDONALD, D.D., 

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY. 

, Edited, nvith an Introduction, by the 

Very Rev. J. S. HOWSON, D.D., Dean of Chester, 

Joint Author of Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul. 



In one large handsome volume 8vo. Cloth. Price, $5.00. 

LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS, ENGRAVED EXPRESSLY FOR THIS WORK. 

Bust of Augustus. Shechem. _ Bust of Nero. Sardis. 

Bust of Tiberius Csesar. Csesarea Philippi. Thyatira. Site of Capernaum. 

Bethsaida, Site of. Garden of Gethsemane. Philadelphia. Jacob's Well. 

Jerusalem. Bethany. Laodicea, Tiberias. 

Cana of Galilee. Samaria. Bust of Julius Caesar. Pool of Siluam. 

Road from Jerusalem Bust of Caligula. Old Tyre, Bust of Vespasian. 

to Jericho. Ephesus. Bust of Titus. Smyrna. 

Jerusalem, Walls of St. John. Pergamos. 

Imperium Romanorum Latissime Palestine in Time of Christ Patmos. 

Patens. Asia Minor, showing the Seven St. John's Travels. 

Churches 

TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
I. The Place in History, and character of the period in which the Apostle John appeared. 
II. Parentage, early life, and natural trr ' "♦■ the Apostle. 
III. St. John in his early stage of preparai ir the Apostleship as a disciple of John the 

Baptist. 
rV. St. John under the training of the Great Master Himself from the beginning of His public 

ministry. 
V. Preparation for his work from intercourse and instruction in private ; especially from the . 
great sacrifice offered by Jesus, as witnessed by the Apostle himself. 
VI. Crowning pr. of of the Messiahship of Jesus, as witnessed by St. John. 
VU. History of St. John in the Acts of the Apostles. 

VIII. Later History n traditionary sources, till his arrival at Ephesus, and banishment to 
Patmos. 
IX. St. John writes the Apocalypse. Its Date and Design. 
X. Analysis of the Apocalypse, with brief explanatory Notes. 
XL Traditionary History of the Apostle continued. 
XII. St. John writes the Fourth Gospel. Date, Design, and Contents. 

XIII. Analysis of the Gospel, with brief explanatory Notes. 

XIV. Last days and concluding Writings of the Apostle. 
XV. Analysis of the Epistles, with brief explanatory Notes. 



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paid, upon receipt of advertised price by the publishers, 

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